Hans Danuser

Hans Danuser (19 March 1953 – 26 August 2024) was a Swiss artist and photographer. His first major work, the cycle In Vivo, brought him international fame, therein he broke several societal taboos with respect to genetic research and nuclear physics.

Oeuvre Danuser had been invited to contribute to international events such as the biennales in Venice and Lyon. In the 1980s Danuser embarked on his cycle In Vivo, completing it in 1989. The Frozen Embryo Series, made in the 1990s, a follow-up of In Vivo, also prefigured two ongoing works, The Erosion Project and Entscheidungsfindung – Decision taking.

Biography Danuser was born in Chur on 19 March 1953. After working in Zürich for the German advertising and fashion photographer Michael Lieb from 1972 to 1974, Danuser began experimenting with light-sensitive emulsion at the ETH Zurich. Located in Castasegna and designed by the German architect Gottfried Semper, the villa was subsequently repurposed as a remote seminar and convention center. Today, the facility serves primarily as a retreat for ETH Zürich.

Danuser was primarily based in Zürich.

Danuser died on 30 August 2024, at the age of 71.

Series and projects

Out of Paradies The series of works consists of found and staged stencil paintings, created by means of paint-spray cans on different supports, at the intersection of public and private space. They have been photographed since the 1980s in various cities in Europe and the United States. The ephemeral in the existence of the stencil images on physical substrates is taken up by Danuser's photography and transformed by means of digital image processing and sublimation printing technique on aluminum, into images that in their brilliantly reflective appearance, suggest ephemeral and digital screen surfaces (Peer 2019).

Out of Paradies (1980s–2019)

Matographs – The-One-Million-Pound-Project

The Matographs – The-One-Million-Pound-Projekt (work in progress) was developed with the research departments of Ciba-Geigy (today Novartis), Basel, and Bayer Werke / Agfa Gevaert, Leverkusen (today AGFA). By patenting "matographs," a new photographic process, Danuser pursued the goal of being able to "process substrate with color according to [his] ideas before coating it with a photographic black-and-white emulsion (Sadkowsky 2018, 7), in contrast to commercially available photographic papers, which have a white layer support. Thus, at the turn from analog to digital photography, he succeeds in "introduce[ing] a new perspective, namely direct[ing] the photographer's gaze to the otherwise unnoticed background [of a photographic print]."(Folkers, 2018, 86).

The Party is over (1984/2016) Matographs and Volcanoes (1996–2018) AT Matographs (1997) Matographs, part I (1993–1996)

Previous work Delta (1990–1996)

Entscheidungsfindung – Decision taking

The Counting Out Rhymes project on the subject of Entscheidungsfindung – Decision taking (work in progress) involves video stations and art-in-architecture. Danuser is interested in the approaches and models used in taking decisions as a social and political instrument, ranging from mathematical theory to the practical counting-out rhymes of children. – are as significant as mathematical formulae and physical laws inasmuch as they are grounded in “nonrational processes of taking decisions” and therefore reflect the fundamental structure of contemporary models of thought.

Joggeli (Nationale Suisse, Basel, 2014) Akka Bakka (Zürich Department of Health, 2013) Piff Paff Puff (Prime Tower, 2010–2012) Insert-Du (2009) Video installation (since 2008)

Previous work Wildwechsel (1993)

The Erosion Project Danuser, Erosion III – a floor installation, 2000–2006, 9 parts (III 1–III 9), photographs on baryta paper, each 150 x 140 cm, installation in the Kunsthaus Zürich (Böcklin hall).

The Erosion Project (work in progress) conducts research into the erosion of natural and cultivated landscapes which takes the shape of a clear, reduced aesthetic. 'The project consists of three series: floor installations, Erosion I-VII (2000–2006); Modeling Erosion (2003–2007), created in collaboration with the ETH Zurich Institute of Geotechnical Engineering; and Landschaft in Bewegung/Moving Landscape (2008–), a collaboration with the ETHZ Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry as part of the research project Farbe und Fotografie/Colour and Photography. Earlier works were seminal to the series, specifically Landschaften (1993–1996) and the art-in-architecture project Schiefertafel Beverin (2001).

Erosion I-VII (2000–2006) Modeling Erosion (2003–2007) Landschaft in Bewegung/Moving Landscape (since 2008)

Previous work Landschaften (1993–1996) Strangled Bodies (1995, 2001) Schiefertafel Beverin (2000–2001)

Frozen Embryo Series Danuser, Frozen Embryo Installation, Bündner Kunstmuseum, 2000, photographs on baryta paper, 3-part, each 141 x 150 cm, installation in the Villa Planta atrium and staircase to the permanent collection exhibition on the first floor.

The photographs in the Frozen Embryo Series (1996–2000) have their origins in medical laboratories and gene research. These works find Danuser playing with the opportunities presented by analogue photography: he takes a single negative (which he calls the “original”) and, by turning and mirroring it in the darkroom, generates from it a number of other images, which he calls “one-offs”. To reinforce this impression, Danuser chose the square as format for his images, slightly stretched to 140 cm x 150 cm. The Frozen Embryo Series was first shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1996. Günter Metken writes in the exhibition catalogue: “Without being explicit, Hans Danuser's work addresses the classical problem – and paradox – of painting: the perception of nature and its reproduction, the tension between surface and depth, volume and two-dimensionality, foreground and background, microscopy and totality, vision and the sense of touch. The artist actualises these issues and yet his stream of drifting shapes reminds us of Monet's Water Lilies. Our gaze wanders, roams, follows winding shapes in an ecstasy of sensual expansion and refinement.”

Frozen-Embryo-Installation (1996)

Scores and Pictures 1988 found Danuser for the first time showing the pictures in the Architekturgalerie Luzern under the title Partituren und Bilder (Scores and Pictures), which he had been commissioned to photograph by the Pritzker prizewinning architect Peter Zumthor in 1986–1988: the Atelier des Architekten (Architect's studio) in Haldenstein, the Schutzbauten über römischen Funden (protective pavilions above Roman finds) in Chur and the Kapelle Sogn Benedetg (Chapel of St. Benedict) in the Surselva region of Canton Graubünden. The artist-cum-photographer was given carte blanche by the architect. In his essay in the book Zumthor sehen. Bilder von Hans Danuser – Nachdenken über Architektur und Fotografie, Philip Ursprung, professor of contemporary art and architectural history, discusses the impact that Danuser's photographs in Partituren und Bilder exerted on the depiction of architecture in photography: “With his photographs of Sogn Benedetg, Danuser radically altered the conventions of architectural photography. Instead of neutral documentation, he was interested in personal interpretation. And instead of reducing the phenomenon to a photograph, he as it were dismantled the building into its component parts, like a short film, which breaks the subject down into sequences and shows it from different perspectives; today one would call this performative. These fragments offer the observer the opportunity to reconstruct the building in the imagination.”

Partituren und Bilder. Architektonische Arbeiten aus dem Atelier Peter Zumthor (1985–1988) (Score and Pictures. Architectural work from the studio of Peter Zumthor) Peter Zumthor, Therme Vals, in Zusammenarbeit mit Fritz Hauser, Sounding Stones Therme Vals (1996) (Peter Zumthor, Vals Thermal Baths, in collaboration with Fritz Hauser, Sounding Stones Vals Thermal Baths) Zumthor sehen. Bilder von Hans Danuser (2009) (Looking at Zumthor, Pictures by Danuser)

In Vivo Danuser, In Vivo, 1980–1989, Chemie I (VI 1), photographs on baryta paper, 50 x 40 cm. Settings: pharmacology and chemistry research, analysis and production facilities.

Danuser worked for ten years on seven series of images, which he compiled in 1989 under the title In Vivo and presented to the public for the first time at the Kunstmuseum Aarau; the exhibition was curated by Beat Wismer. Taken in Europe and the US, the photographs in In Vivo are arranged in seven sections: A-Energie, Medizin I, Gold, Medizin II, Chemie I, Los Alamos, Chemie II (Nuclear Energy, Medicine I, Gold, Medicine II, Chemistry I, Los Alamos, Chemistry II). Depicting a variety of workplaces in research and production facilities, the work affords insights into taboo areas of late-industrial Western society without showing the people themselves. The images gauge the ambivalence of photography between documentation and fiction. The work has appeared in a book published by Lars Müller in 1989, also titled In Vivo.

Stipends and studio awards 1974, 1976, 1983, 1985: Federal art stipend/Swiss Art Award 1979, 1983, 1985: Study and work grants from Canton of Zürich 1985: Art stipend for a residency at the City of Zürich studio in New York 1983, 1984, 1985: Art stipend from the City of Zürich 1991: Art stipend for a residency at the Landis & Gyr Foundation studio in London 1996: Artist in Residence at Los Alamos Laboratories, New Mexico, USA

Film and television Michael Hegglin, Der Fotokünstler Hans Danuser und seine Arbeit im öffentlichen Raum. In: 10vor10 on Swiss TV SF DRS, 1993. Michael Hegglin, Zeichen im Dunkel – Hans Danuser. In: Swiss TV SF DRS and TV broadcaster 3sat, April 1996. Barbara Seiler, Landscape in Movement – in conversation with the artist and photographer Danuser. In: Sternstunde, Swiss TV SF TV, 18 January 2009 and 24 January 2009, video 52 min. 16 secs.: Camera, Christine Munz // Sound, Michael Ryffel // Editor and music Brian Burmann // Director René Baumann // Head of production Rahel Holenstein // SF TV editor, Marion Bornschier, a coproduction by Videoladen Zürich / Sternstunden, Swiss TV SF TV, Zürich // Cinema premiere at Kino Canva as part of the Solothurner Filmtage programme, 2009.