By interfering in try-outs and rejected works digitally and materially, their artistic practice is in constant motion and revision.

Eschewing the art world’s conscientious formula for creation / documentation / distribution, the artists approach their own process more like mail-order shopping. As if commissioned by themselves to efficiently reproduce their own piece, the artists optimise their own labour, using mechanical tools such as serigraphy with a strict and planned execution. Curator Gianni Jetzer notes, “The fact that the source images were not created to be blown up [means] the artworks oscillate between the real thing and representation ...resulting in ‘paintings’ of irritating beauty.”

 

Through the process of reviewing scale and resolution, abstracting time and re-arranging order, Linus Bill + Adrien Horni employ the reproduced image and reconfigure and destabilise the values and schematics of the image. “Usually a book ends something, brings something to a conclusion. When for us it is just the starting point and opens up so many possibilities. Our books do not look to the past, but to the future”.

 

Both born in 1982, one in Geneva (CH) and the other in Jegenstorf (CH), Adrien Horni and Linus Bill live and work in Biel, Switzerland. Horni is trained as a graphic designer, Bill as a photographer. Their first works are noteworthy for their aesthetic simplicity, following in the tradition of artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Ray Parker. Over the years, though, their art has developed and become more complex and heterogeneous. This is a deliberate choice, an attempt to distance art-historical references and to elaborate their own distinct vocabulary, one that looks more to the future. Linus Bill + Adrien Horni were the winners of the Swiss Art Award in 2013.

 

Recent presentations of their work include La fine ligne. Kunsthalle Saint Gallen, Saint Gallen, CH (2020), Un été indien. FRAC Normandie-Caen, Caen, FR (2020), Cantonale Berne Jura. La Nef, Le Noirmont, CH (2019), Linus Bill + Adrien Horni. La Salle de Bains, Lyon, FR (2018), Das Glied. ACRUSH, Zurich, CH (2018), to name a few.