Little boys dream of
being or dressing-up as Zorro: the Spanish
version of the fearless noble hero, Robin Hood.
Little girls, on the other hand, dream of being
fairies, bridesmaids, or princesses. They seem
two impossible pipedreams, two separate
intangible fantasies. A little girl can never
dress up as Zorro and try to fly or to turn into
the superhero with the legendary “Z”
etched on her cape. Instead, she can only use her
imagination. And it is precisely this feeling,
which no doubt strikes an autobiographical note
in all of us, that emerges when we observe one of
Zilla Leutenegger's video installations. The
work's title, “Z”, is no accident of
chance. It is but one of the strange, poetic
references that emerge throughout Leutenegger's
oeuvre, which embraces video, installation, and
drawing.
For, that simple letter “Z” –
which, although nothing more than a letter, is
never banal, being the last letter in every
single alphabet – unites in a single
instance those two antithetic fantasies common to
every childhood, whether male or female, which
were once discrete and are still, therefore,
separate in the memories of each of us. The
letter "Z" is also the initial letter
of the artist's first name: Zilla. While the same
letter "Z" was the very symbol
of the little boys' hero, the sign he left
behind him as his calling card wherever he went.
The intimate, autobiographical content of
Leutenegger's work extends yet further,
therefore. She walks on two parallel tracks that
represent the masculine and the feminine and, by
some magic, or perhaps simply poetry, the
scenario of contrast and opposition diminishes.
What we are faced with here is not consolation,
but a strange form of childish satisfaction that
allows us to shout out, or rather to think to
ourselves: “So, I could have dressed up as
Zorro when I was a little girl.” In the
video, the fairytale continues with the artist's
figure being plunged into a film Western
background at sunset, the landscape rosy with the
warm glow of a day on the American prairie. In a
manner more reminiscent of theatre than cinema,
Leutenegger's image runs in front of this
backdrop at the pace of a galloping horse, or
rather of the pommel horse – as that strange
object in the gym, which closely resembles a
horse's back, is called. The gallop that
Leutenegger adopts is yet another part of the
game, another gamble, an unleashing of desires.
This fictitious image would be incomplete without
the sound of real horses' hooves hitting the
ground. And which child doesn't know what sound a
galloping horse makes? We've all known it since
we were tiny. Just as we've known that trains go
“choo-choo". And Leutenegger's work is
not without a train either; a little toy train
that wends its way steadily across the floor of
the gallery. Indeed, what world of film Westerns,
of Zorro, and of little boys would be complete
without train tracks and old, broken-down
locomotives? Leutenegger's depiction is perfect;
the game has been a complete success. But we can
only win if we imagine, like Leutenegger, that we
are “a little shadow” – as the
subtitle to the work's real title, “Z”,
suggests.
Paola
Noé
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ZILLA
LEUTENEGGER 1968 born in Switzerland,
lives in Zurich
Einzelausstellungen/One
Person Shows
2003 Cimaise & Portique, Albi, France, Summer
2002 Artopia, Milan, Dec. “In
Verso”Rita and Remo Urso, Milano, Dec.
Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz, Oct. 26 - Nov. 24,
curated by Sabine Schaschl
“La Piccola Ombra”, Studio Massimo de
Carlo, Milano, Oct.18 - 26
“but it will never end”, Taché-Lévy
Gallery, Brussels, Apr. 19 - May 25
“Oh mein Papa”, Stadtgalerie, Bern,
March 22 - May 4
“it`ll end in tears”, Galerie Peter
Kilchmann, Jan. 19 - March 22
Gruppenausstellungen/Group
Shows
2002 “L`image habitable”, Centre pour
l`image contemporaine, Geneva, Nov. 1 - Dec. 15
“Videodrome II”, New Museum of
Contemporary Art, New York, Oct.2 - Nov 3
“media_city seoul 2002”, International
new media biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, Sept. 26
- Nov. 24, curated by Wonil Rhee
“Printemps de Septembre”, festival de
photographie & arts visuels, Toulouse,
France, Sept.29 - Oct.13
“Stardust Deluxe”, Villa Elisabeth
& Lisa Lounge, Berlin, courated by Antje
Weitzel, Sept. 7
“final frontier”, Spencer Brownstone
Gallery, New York, July 19 - Aug. 31
“Kein Ort, nirgends”, Kunstverein
Freiburg, June 28 - Aug. 25, curated by Dorothea
Strauss
“ Le virtuel et l`illusion”, Villa
Bernasconi, Grand-Lancy, Geneva, May 25 - June 30
“GUT GEBAUT”, Kilinik Im Schachen,
Aarau, May 25 - June 23
“Lines/Moving”, Wohnmaschine, Berlin,
March 22 - 27. Apr. 27
“Werk- und Atelierstipendien”,
Helmhaus, Zurich, Apr. 5 - May 12
“drawing on my mind”, Forum Stadtpark,
Graz, Apr. 20 - May 5, curated by Maria Anna
Tappeiner
“Doppel 8 - Valentin Carron und Zilla
Leutenegger”, Galerie Kamm Berlin, March 1 -
Apr. 13
“Tabu”, Kunsthaus Baselland, Jan. 26 -
March 17, curated by Sabine Schaschl
Performances
2000
TransArt 2000, Musikforum Zug, multimediale
installation mit Tim Krohn und Matthias Müller
1998 Videoinstallation mit Barbetrieb, Kunsthof
Zürich
Performance- und Videotage Kunstmuseum Luzern,
Performance mit Annelise Coste
Videoinstallation, Kunsthof Zürich
”Morph von JOKO”, Performance mit
Annelise Coste, Klinik Zürich
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