Gert Handschin
Photography, Object, Installation
born in 1959 in Basel
After training as a carpenter, Gert Handschin studied at the Basel Art College.
In 1987 and 1998 he was awarded an arts scholarship by Basel; in 1988 a Swiss federal arts scholarship and in 1989 the Kiefer-Hablitzel Scholarship. In 1988 he spent time in Egypt on an artist exchange funded by the CMS Foundation, and in 1994-95 he had a residency in the Cité des Arts in Paris.
He has worked in the schools of Basel city as a handicrafts and drawing teacher since 1995.
In 2012 he was awarded a Swatch artist's residency in Shanghai.
Gert Handschin has been exhibiting internationally since 1988
(at Maison 44 2008/09/12).
He lives and works in Basel.
About his work
Gert Handschin's topics are the simultaneous opposites of nearness and distance, light and dark, confinement and vastness, furthermore the spatiality, threedimensionality and the sculptural.
"…attractive and disturbing at one and the same time these topics assail us. Either there are no titles, or they are abstract and open… His newest photographic works also speak this language: underwater photographs taken without any special diving-equipment, simply holding the camera in shallow water, and with a minimum of retouching. These, too, offer a clandestine yet disquieting spatiality. The best career description for Gert Handschin would probably have to be: creator of spaces." (Eva Kramis)
Besides fotographic works Gert Handschin creates also objects and large-scale installations.