THE ARTIST ALEX KAYSER

A window into the beating heart of an era

Few people afforded such keen sensibilities as media artist Alex Kayser (1949-2015) in grasping and expressing the vibe of an era, extending over the turn of a century. His imagery, created within six decades, provides insight into human scenarios, manifesting on the threshold of the third millennium: an epoch characterized by the rise of digital technology, the omnipresence of screens, and a symbolic language that reflects commodity-oriented perceptions.

Creating series and adopting multiple forms of media are vital aspects in the work of Alex Kayser – two themes that were also central to Pop Art. Subjects of his portraits and documentations frequently feature wildly disparate casts of characters: trailblazing artists, musicians, bankers, soldiers, sex workers, political leaders and individuals who had fallen on the hardest of times, referred to by Kayser as “the Bowery men.” Kayser’s loft in Downtown NYC on West Broadway quickly became a hub for the art scene. Luminaries such as Sam Wagstaff, Andy Warhol, George Maciunas or Christo and Jeanne-Claude lounged at his bar. Fostering his musical proclivities, Alex cherished roaming the music clubs in Lower Manhattan, the birthplace of new trends. He also kept in close touch with Swiss culture and well-known protagonists of various genres such as musician Dieter Meier (Yello) and writer Max Frisch.

The theme of “Artist Portraits,” published as a book in 1981, was therefore a natural choice. For these photographs, Alex Kayser developed a unique means of expression by colouring black-and-white prints with glaze paint. In his subsequent book entitled “Heads,” he took seriality a step further. Kayser not only dispenses with colour, but also with perspective. By omitting hair as a personal hallmark, his portraits achieve a superb tension between two opposing perceptions: the impression of anonymity, while simultaneously an intensification of individual traits and personality occur. Critics and friends often describe his style as “narrative photography”: in his approach Kayser is genuine in capturing multiple facets of a person and situation within a single image.

In Kayser’s next creative leap, mediality took center stage. He was fascinated by computers and the immense possibilities they offered, which were little understood at the time. Exploration of interactivity and connectivity ensued. One such realization was the “Stuka Tower” installation, created in collaboration with his friend and colleague Renate Sturmer and named in a compound of the initial letters of Sturmer and Kayser. Visitors were able to trigger and follow images of events happening in remote locations via touch screens arranged in exhibition rooms, thereby dispensing with the familiar dimensions of space and time. The oeuvre was never complete, but ever changing.

Kayser’s work has attracted worldwide attention; in addition to the USA, he exhibited in eight European countries as well as Japan. Alex Kayser is remembered as a man who seized and drove the creative potential of emerging technologies from the outset, an artist who vividly captured and transmogrified dynamic forces and sentiments of an evolutionary era.

— Georg Weber, Zurich, 17.10.2017