Lot 17: Selected images from i built this garden for us, 1996-1997

Selected images from i built this garden for us, 1996-1997
Six colour coupler prints. Each 19.7 x 29 cm. (7 3/4 x 11 7/16 in).  Each accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity. Each number 4 from an edition of 10.

 Edition Patrick Frey, Stefan Banz: i built this garden for us, photographic works 1992-1999, Zurich, 1999, cover and n.p.

 Acquired directly from the artist

Not only in motifs but also in content is the viewer of Stefan Banz’s photographs confronted with fragments. Narrative is barely hinted at, there is no diegetic whole, no story that could be pieced together. The convention of the family snapshot indicating time, place, protagonists and, consequently, the occasion (outing, barbecue, wedding) is ignored. The viewer feels displaced and confused, searching for evidence with the will to understand…With his aesthetics he annexes the conventional family world of smalltown normality and, in a subtext to the strategy of suspense, transforms it into a desirable product of art.
Michelle Nicol, 'Suspense, Camp and Coolness', Stefan Banz, Dive, Offenes Kulturhaus, 1996, p. 53-56
 
Images included are: No.s 10, 67, 75, 33, 24 and 20.