Mitchell Anderson
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2021
1985
Switzerland
Maria Bernheim
Born 1985, Chicago, USA / Lives and works in Walchwil and Zurich, Switzerland.
Mitchell Anderson uses existing objects and imagery in a body of work that explores contemporary and historical contradictions, humor and tragedies of existence. In a broad multi-media practice Anderson presents contemplative objects of collective hope and failure and questions the narrative capabilities and codes of the visual and physical.
“The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year. If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.”
―Narrator
This body of work explores the layering of content and medium with the ancient technique of encaustic - a paint made from pigment mixed with melted beeswax and resin and after application fixed by heat. Thought of as a monochrome but also as sculpture, each of the paintings reflects on the possibilities of the technique and displays motif in more or less abstract ways.
The motif of the rose has been recurring in art history especially in vanitas paintings, but it has also taken on many symbols beyond love, such as the Socialist French party using it as its logo. Exploring the idea of generosi ...
Installation view, Lose enden, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2021
Jasper Johns, “Target with Plaster Casts”, 1955, encaustic and collage
Installation view, Partial Gift, Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich, 2020
