In the studio of… Thomas Kneubühler | Documenting our tracks

Swiss contemporary artist Thomas Kneubühler has lived in Montreal for 22 years. Passionate about social subjects and the transformation of our environments, he takes photographs that document the traces of our activities in cities and in the heart of nature.

Eric Clement
The Press

Martin Chamberland
The Press

His journey

Power lines, retransmission antennas, industrial sites, transatlantic cable, office buildings lit up at night, as well as ski resorts. Thomas Kneubühler takes a neutral but questioning look at the traces left by theHomo sapiens technologicus. Born in Solothurn, in German-speaking Switzerland, to farmer parents, he has a down-to-earth side that is quite attractive. His studies in social sciences, coupled with others in art history, make him a photographer who, without committing himself, asks good universal questions.

Having completed a master’s degree in contemporary photography at Concordia University in 2000, following a six-month artistic residency in Montreal in 1996, he has a particular outlook. It comes to him from his militant youth in Basel, his curious nature, his cinematographic tastes (Jean-Luc Godard and Jim Jarmusch) and his fascination for the photographer Robert Frank (1924-2019), which has never been repeated. and became a filmmaker when he felt like he had done the photography trick. Kneubühler also uses video when the subjects he deals with are complex. He screens his films at international festivals.

He travels to Switzerland twice a year for artistic projects. During the Art Basel fair, he organizes visits for art dealers. These round trips allow him to develop a career on two continents. But the turning point in her career was her participation in the Triennale québécoise, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, in 2011. The following year, her participation, with Isabelle Hayeur and Pascal Grandmaison, in an exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Center in Paris, as part of the Mois de la photo, has contributed to its notoriety.

His workshops

Thomas Kneubühler is coordinator at the Post Image Cluster laboratory, which is part of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, a Concordia research center. A lab of which other artists like Hannah Claus, Velibor Božović, Chih-Chien Wang, Raymonde April or Marisa Portolese are members. This lab is his main workshop, a place of production and stimulating encounters. But he has other workspaces: his home, a small local in Mile End where he finalizes his works, one in Basel where he collaborates with the collective of artists VIA, but also nature, “a workshop” which inspires a lot.

In Concordia’s workshop-lab, an observation booth allows him to check his prints with neutral light before calibrating the quality of the photo on a computer. It only uses Photoshop to vary the brightness. Like in a dark room. “It’s easier for the light, but otherwise I don’t change anything in the photo,” he says. I don’t want a perfect photo. I like the documentary look. It is the underlying concept that makes the photo an artistic work. »

His works

Thomas Kneubühler does not make art for aesthetics, but to provoke reflection. He began to dig this furrow in 2001 with Absence, a series of portraits of people working on computers. Concentrated faces that we recognize too well today. And which document the reality of billions of Earthlings since the rise of the internet.

One of his best-known series, however, is Office 2000, a work from 2003 to 2008 on buildings in downtown Montreal, photographed at night when the employees are no longer there. Same thing in 2009 with Electric Mountains, ski resorts taken in the evening, which was very successful. Last year he created the series Funkloch, a German term that evokes that moment when we lose contact with the modern world, when our cell phones no longer pick up. He took pictures in the Alps, when he was in this situation. The series led him to publish Alpine Signals, which includes 26 landscapes of the Engadine where there are transmission antennas. To give a less bucolic idea of ​​this alpine region.

His projects

Until May 16, Thomas Kneubühler is featured at the Kunstmuseum in Olten, Switzerland. His first museum solo. In Darkness is a retrospective of 12 years of work deployed in two black spaces of the museum. At the same time, he is working on a corpus that stems from a residency in Bulgaria, during which he had the idea of ​​evoking the theme of borders. “Before, you couldn’t get out of Bulgaria because of the Iron Curtain, now you can’t get in because of the refugees. I find it interesting, this theme of borders, nationalism and the nation-state. It is current with what is happening with Putin. I collected a lot of material. Now I have to choose from the many photos and videos I brought back. »

These choices will be based on the wealth of information in the photos. Because his works also look closely, like those of Kent Monkman, Karine Giboulo or Sayeh Sarfaraz. Thomas Kneubühler also believes that his gaze is increasingly North American. This encourages him to want to confront him with more European subjects. He says he has about twenty ideas in his bag.

“I always have plenty,” he said. But I don’t have any exotic cravings. I like to talk about places where I find a connection. And then, to be precise, it takes time. So, I go at my own pace, keep working hard, and take advantage of the life experiences that influence my work…”

His Portfolio