The Swiss artist and photographer has been merging art and science for ten years, experimenting with the boundaries between time, space, object, and reality.
Photographer, artist, scientist, experimenter… Fabian Oefner is everything at once. This Swiss creator decomposes, destructures, dissects, cuts up, disintegrates all sorts of objects in a process of destruction and then reassembly in order to create hyper-realistic two-dimensional works. This reflection forms the genesis of his photographic, artistic, and kinetic installations that are as astonishing as they are explosive. What he seeks is to capture moments invisible to the naked eye, creating fictitious time-spaces that look real. At the heart of his experiments are intertwined phenomena and scientific properties (sound waves, centripetal forces, iridescence, magnetic ferrofluids…). This interest in photography and science was born at the age of 14 when he discovered the work of Harold Edgerton and the effects of his apple being shot through. A year later, he bought a camera. The former product design graduate, who spent time at Leica Geosystems, then founded his studio near Zurich in 2012. Since then, he has exhibited around the world and collaborated with major brands, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Louboutin, Lamborghini, and Nike.
Reinventing looks
Fabian Oefner is inspired by the world of physics and creates artistic equivalents, renewing the means and materials to show that art and science are not antinomic. His most famous series is undoubtedly “Desintegrating.” Cars are completely dismantled and photographed piece by piece in a precise position to obtain the illusion that they are exploding. The “Heisenberg” series is based on the uncertainty principle of Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg believed that it was impossible to simultaneously measure two physical properties of the same particle. Oefner then took five objects (sneakers, clock, tape recorder…), filled them with resin, cut them into hundreds of pieces and rearranged them into a new version. From afar, the object is identifiable, up close, it becomes distorted until it is no longer understandable as a whole. Same idea with “Glitchbook” where he uses a MacBook Pro. Or “CutUp,” with cameras, for a mise en abyme of his own working tool, transforming them into a work of art. Fabian Oefner thus reveals the beauty under the surface of objects in a methodical, playful, and poetic approach, which invites the viewer to reflect differently on the world.
Switzerland
Credits : @Fabian Oefner Studio
Nathalie Dassa