Battlefield

New monograph

After producing many videos and films, Swiss artist Jérôme Leuba (b. 1970) has built a substantial corpus of “living” artworks entitled “battlefield.” As such, these works create or describe zones of tension by employing codes of representation that challenge the meaning these images might bear. His battlefields do not only address zones of power conflicts, but also the very personal struggles we might experience when confronted with his scenarios. For instance “battlefield #19/if you see something say something” (2005) takes the form of a simple intervention in public space: a piece of luggage left inconspicuously in a corner of the museum, an act that since 9/11 has lost its innocence … Many of Leuba’s works are thus dealing with anxiety, collective feelings, and mass behaviors.

A conversation with art critic and Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers co-director Mathilde Villeneuve, as well as an essay by Kunsthaus Zürich curator Mirjam Varadinis offer an overview of Jérôme Leuba’s work and its relationship to the public realm. The book also includes a short narrative “remembrance” by the French filmmaker and author Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

Published with Mamco, Geneva (Prix Manor).