Gian Losinger (*1996) is a lens based artist. He works in his immediate surroundings, feeling that there is a connecting quality in everyday moments and things. His works don’t focus on what we think we know of the world but on what we can see of it. They can be read as everyday still lifes inscribed in the history of vanitas imagery. Gian has studied Art History and sustainable development in Bern. It was there that his interest for alternative ways of living on and with this planet and its beings, and also his belief that art can act as a tool of research for such questions, deepened.
Born in 1996, lives and works between Bern and Lausanne.
Currently, he is studying fine arts at HEAD – Geneva, and will obtain his bachelor’s degree in 2022.
His works have been shown at Galerie Bernhard Bischoff & Partner, Stadtgalerie Bern, Fabienne Levy Gallery and others.
The photographs are an invitation to look at the world with a compassionate gaze, free of judgement and full of questions. They don’t focus on what we think we know of the world but on what we can see of it. They can be read as everyday still lifes inscribed in the history of vanitas imagery. They deal with a variety of things, what connects them is that they talk about what it feels like to be alive for me.
Whilst every one of them depicts a singular moment, as an installation they form a whole and invite you to consider all those moments happening simultaneously in this space and time. They show how I look at the world, with a tender and caring gaze, trying to observe and enjoy it rather than exploit it. They are a personal and utopian space.
I try to let images happen to me, rather than take or capture them. I am not hunting for images. I am no predator. Working in the field of photography, I try to be aware of and let go of this falsely objective gaze practiced over decades. I try to create pictures that are not rooted in this false objectivity, nor want to show what is right and wrong, but open a space without the need to answer or define things. My own ambiguities, questions and inadequacies have space in the work. I try to speak – through a subjective and personal representation of the world that surrounds me and I am part of – about the things that I can speak about, without appropriating things that are foreign to me. I look at the world, let it touch me and touch it. I wish to soften the hierarchy of the photographer and the photographed and be just as vulnerable. I try to let go of the need to present the new to my peers, but rather invite them to reflect on our own world and being, as I believe that there is a connecting quality in everyday things and moments. I try to intervene and add as little as possible to the things and beings I see. I try to look at the world with open eyes and an open heart and share that attempt in images.
Gian Losinger, 2022
All images : DR / RR The Artist, 2022
