Monika Günther and Ruedi Schill have been making performance work since the late 1970’s. Long before meeting and starting to collaborate in 1995, their work shared similar themes, concerns and materials. Their joint performances since exemplify the artists’ dialogue with each other and in their words, offers a commentary on the "intensive rise of the pressing concerns of our times". The images the artists create strive to illustrate both feelings of being trapped and of experiencing vast spaciousness, collaged through absurd picture combinations reflecting powerlessness and vulnerability.

Please join us on September 19 for two new works from Monika Günther and Ruedi Schill, entitled Silence and Fait a la Main. This will be their first appearance in Toronto.

"Monika Günther and Ruedi Schill develop in their performances sparse pictures of suggestive force which are hard to describe in words. Deliberately slow and sedate gestures underline not only their physical presence but also create mysterious sensations of time, emphasized by repetition. The emerging archetypal picture - and sound - scenarios are, in their ambivalence, not only sublime and enigmatic but also depressing and spine-chilling." ~Marie-Luise Lange, Kunst + Unterricht, 2003

Upcoming Performance and Curating Events for Monika Günther and Ruedi Schill

September 12: 
Curating 8 International Performance Art, Turbine Giswil, Switzerland www.performanceart.ch

September 19, 2009:
FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto, Canada)

September 24, 2009:
VIVA!art action - Festival (Montréal, Canada)
www.vivamontreal.org

October 2, 2009:
ART NOMADE Festival, La Pulperie (Chicoutimi, Canada)
(with Elvira Santamaria, Sylvie Cotton, Bartolomé Ferrando, Etienne Boulanger, Monika Günther/Ruedi Schill)

October 7, 2009:
ART NOMADE Festival, Espace Virtuel (Chicoutimi, Canada)
(with Chumpon Apisuk, Monika Günther/Ruedi Schill)

October 8, 2009:
ART NOMADE Festival, Horace (Sherbrooke, Canada)
(with Elvira Santamaria, Bartolomé Ferrando, Monika Günther/Reudi Schill

November 18, 2009:
Accion!09MAD Festival, Laboratorio De Arte Joven (Murcia, Spain)
www.accionmad.org

November 20, 2009:
Accion!09MAD Festival, Matadero (Murcia, Spain)
(with Kurt Johannesen, Monika Günther/Ruedi Schill)
www.accionmad.org

Images: TALKING HANDS, first performed in Valdivia, Chile at the Deformes Festival in November 2008; and SONG FOR A DOG, first performed in Solo, Java at the Undisclosed Territory No. 3 Festival in April 2009.