ÉTIENNE KRÄHENBÜHL

Born in 1953 in Vevey, Switzerland
Lives and works in Sarraz and Yverdon, Switzerland

After two years at the School of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Étienne Krähenbühl moved to Barcelona and then Paris. Returning to Switzerland, he first went to Agiez and then set up a workshop in Romainmôtier, where he devoted his time to sculpture, taking particular interest in the marks left by time on various materials. As the art consultant Joan-Francesc Ainaud writes, “The idea of time is always present in Krähenbühl’s work: time as the artist’s witness or his expression, the materialization of his memory. […] Rust and wear are both the materialization and the metaphor for time. Time as memory of a past, recollection, witness or footstep, in constant transformation.”

In what has been described as a turning point in his career, he met Dr. Rolf Gotthardt, a specialist in metal alloys and superelastic metals at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL). Their long collaboration inspired Krähenbühl to create at the intersection of science and poetry, monumentality and fragility, gravity and weightlessness—to “test the limits of materials to bring out their movements and sounds from the depths of the earth,” according to the art critic Françoise Jaunin.

The artist bypasses the physical properties of the materials to create pieces in which sound, movement, and the contrast between monumentality and fragility acquire primordial importance. To quote the art consultant Joan-Francesc Ainaud, “The results of a deep understanding of a material’s expressive potential, Étienne Krähenbühl’s sculptures offer a new and fascinating reflection on ourselves and our surroundings.” And Françoise Jaunin writes, “Always sensitive to natural phenomena and increasingly drawn to the essence of things, the sculptor constantly refines and reinforces the monumental aspects of his works to set free the memory and music of their materials.”

Since the mid-1970s, Étienne Krähenbühl has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, India, China, Japan, Lebanon, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and the United States. Among his many distinctions, he received the Edouard and Maurice Sandoz Foundation Award in 2009.