Balthasar Burkhard's Monumental Photography at MASI Lugano

The MASI – Museo d'Arte della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano presents 'Balthasar Burkhard. Dal documento alla fotografia monumentale,' the final stop of a tour that previously visited Essen and Winterthur. Curated by Guido Comis and Diego Stephani, the exhibition traces Burkhard's evolution from documentary photographer to creator of monumental photographic works. Born in Berna in 1944, Burkhard began his career in the 1960s as the official photographer for the Kunsthalle Bern under Harald Szeemann, where he encountered artists like Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman, Alighiero Boetti, and Richard Serra. His early series 'L'Alpe' already showed his sensitivity to materiality. From the 1970s, he employed strategies to assert photography as autonomous art, such as in 'Das Bett' (1960s-70s), a collaboration with Markus Raetz that plays with scale and fabric. Key installations include his 1983 work at Kunsthalle Basel and a 1984 collaboration with Niele Toroni at Musée Rath in Geneva, both replicated at MASI, where serial body part images become sculptural architectural elements. The exhibition emphasizes the physicality and spatial presence of Burkhard's large-format prints.