The illustrated book “Birdwatching” by Alex Hanimann is published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen, which was realized in collaboration with the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (mamco), Geneva. For “Birdwatching” Alex Hanimann installed aviaries (two in Geneva, four in St. Gallen) in the exhibition space and painted them once in black and white, once in red-blue, as if for a laboratory experiment. The aviaries are inhabited by numerous colourful canaries.
These are no ordinary cages that Hanimann places in the showroom. His aviaries have solid walls and show a lot of colour. They are composite, monochrome fields, reminiscent of radical positions in painting. The American artist Barnett Newman is said to have challenged viewers to lose themselves in the immensity of color like a bird in the sky. With Hanimann, the huge dimensions of the colored cage walls are reminiscent of the American’s canvases. The only difference is that our free view is obscured by wire mesh. The colored canaries set colorful accents behind them, constantly fluttering around, robbing us of our concentration.
Alex Hanimann’s wonderfully light, painterly installation finds an adequate realization in the publication “Birdwatching”, which offers text material for in-depth study in addition to the extensive picture section.