YOUR SHIRT ON MY CHAIR
CLAUDIO MOSER STAGED BY HARRY GUGGER

“Your shirt on my chair” – words from Laurie Anderson’s song “Bright Red”, which could not better describe the atmosphere evoked by the photographs and video works of Claudio Moser (born 1959 in Aarau): however concrete they may be, there is so much left unsaid hidden within them, and so many stories can be imagined to go with them.

Claudio Moser moves through the world as a traveller and flâneur, documenting what he sees with his camera. He is not concerned with the sensational, nor with anything that specifies a particular place or time – Moser’s works primarily depict the familiar. Yet this is rendered with such precision and devotion to detail that it quickly becomes clear that his rediscovery of the commonplace is to be understood as a turning towards the image as such, rather than as a programmatic act.

The photographs and video works are staged by the architect Harry Gugger. Whilst Moser’s visual language is characterised by interlocking and layering, Gugger’s approach can be described as a ‘peeling away of layers’. By making the original purpose of the rooms in the former grand hotel as visible and tangible as possible, the museum spaces become, as it were, a backdrop. This enables an experience of Claudio Moser’s works that would not be possible with a conventional hanging.

Steiner, Lena Maria Thüring, Lukas Wassmann.