Zentrum Paul Klee Bern Founded by Maurice E. and Martha Müller and the heirs of Paul Klee

Interview with Catherine Gfeller about artistic collaboration

In the context of a recently developed form of «Partnership» between cultural institutions and artists, the ZPK has invited the multimedia artist, born in Neuchâtel Catherine Gfeller, to accompany the programme and activities of the ZPK for the duration of a year. In an interview she talks about her own attitude to Klee and her artistic work in the ZPK.

What is the importance of Paul Klee in relation to your work?

He is one of the roots of my creativity. I was always tremendously inspired by Paul Klee. Already during my art history studies at university, his works and his writings made a deep impression on me. His essay “Artistic Credo” is fundamental and his reflections on artistic creativity pose questions, which will accompany me forever. Also his inter-disciplinarity I find fascinating and so modern! Painting, drawing, music, writing: everything has a simultaneous influence on everything else. His intelligence, his spirit, his vision in the deepest sense make Klee a timeless artist and in a welcome manner place him outside the transitory modern and new pompous academia.

The “inter-disciplinarity” is a factor, which may also be applied to your own artistic creative work - photography, video, sound, texts, performance, installations … what is its significance for you for your project in the ZPK?

The invitation to realise this project is a wonderful gift! It permits me to steer in between the different disciplines and categories. I let myself be infused by Klee’s world, his works, his writings, his thoughts and his teaching in the way I try to imagine, how his work would have been continued using modern technologies, which may be simultaneously disturbing or liberating for the power of the imagination. I would actually like to become the «smuggler», who invites Klee to the shores of our age.

Is it possible to speak of a spontaneous creativity in your interventions in the ZPK and of works which are specifically linked with Klee and the location at which they take place?

Yes, these are new works and definitely a “work on the spot” situation, which is only possible here. Everything nourishes me. I let myself be totally inspired by the place, by Klee, from the daily activity at the ZPK and all its employees, from the landscape and also from the City of Berne … Every detail is important, most of all those of which nobody takes any notice. The large photo compositions, the video-diptych, the sounding tour guide, the post-it, the performances are all like the waves one and the same work of art, that has transformed itself into various media and different sounds.

Let’s talk about the city … a central theme in your work. In what way is it present in your works at the ZPK ?

In ‘Ville de rêves’, my photographs of Berne in Klee’s works are integrated. They mix themselves into the abstract compositions like a carpet of memories. The arrangement is reminiscent of the frame- work compositions, which he liked so much, where the observer has to reconstruct the meaning as if from a puzzle. We experience the city today through his works. In the video ‘Villes en fugues’ Berne is  shown through a dynamic rhythm, which sets the city in motion. Passers-by, the traffic, buses, cars, bicycles, the architecture: they all have a voice. The confrontation of pictures resembles thoughts, which are in the present, in the past or in the future – in layers lying on top of each other. The artist and her camera: a spider’s web, in which the passers-by and the city are all caught up.
Normally the cities which I walk through with my camera, are metropolises like New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Beirut, Berlin, Rom, Johannesburg … then Berne is of course something quite different but I nevertheless wanted to stay true to myself and in the context of the exhibition «Klee in Bern» I was inspired to cultivate this relationship. It is not a «realistic» picture of Berne … I have reproduced it more vigorously, I preferred summer pictures, with the sun, which emphasises the colours and the shapes. The red of the buses symbolises the uninterrupted stream, like the blood which circulates through the veins of Berne … It is like a kind of obsession, I love reproducing the cities as Mediterranean, hot, celebrating, alive … I had the same feeling when I arrived in New York in 1995 … .

Interview: Simone Küng