Cee Füllemann’s works highlight an economy of proximity and relations that resist dominant structures. Their recent researches are exploring forms of intimacies and present them as fundamental approaches to create a space for collaborative work and shared knowledge. Working at the intersection of performance and sculpture, they are interested in emphasizing the experience of material as living organisms.
https://www.adomesticartfair.com/
contact@ceefullemann.net
EDUCATION
2012 San Francisco Art Institute / SFAI. Master in Fine Arts
2008 University of Art and Design Lausanne / ECAL. Bachelor in Fine Arts
AWARDS
2016 Irène Raymond Foundation Award
2013 Gustave Buchet Foundation Award
2012 SFAI Outstanding Graduate Award in Sculpture
2011 Swiss Art Awards 2011
2008 Ernest Manganel Foundation Award
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Galleri CC, Malmö-SE, Useless romance (it’s all about seduction and death).
2017 Trikot, Basel-CH, Im Taumel der Nacht curated by Deli projects for Basel Museum Night.
2015 Museum Langmatt, Baden-CH, Le jardin travesti curated by Sarah Zürcher
2015 Le loft Sévigné, Paris-FR, Intérieur cascade curated by La Sira.
2014 Rotwand gallery, Zürich-CH, What is soft is hard.
2013 N/A, Oakland-USA, Your motion says you’re in the mood. Featuring Kevin Killian, Paul Ebenkamp, Jocquese Whitfield, Breanna Elyce Sinclaire, Karl Cronin, Teddy Rankin-Parker and Daniel Pearce.
2013 Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts/MC-BA, Lausanne-CH, Forms and lovers.
2012 S.H.E.D. projects, Oakland-USA, I get excited. You get excited.
2010 Les Urbaines, Lausanne-CH, Scale split.
2009 DOLL, Lausanne-CH, Extastik.
2008 Cosmic, Lausanne-CH, At dawn.
2007 Espace Bellevaux, Lausanne-CH, 1.
COLLABORATIONS
2021 Arsenic, Lausanne-CH, Theodora and the progress, with Elise Lammer, Alizee Lennox, Sarah Margnetti, Julie Monot, Lucien Monot, Tarren Johnson, Mia Sanchez, Jessy Razafimandimby, Niels Trannois.
2020 Tanzhaus, Zürich-CH, m.a.d, sculpture for the performance by choreographer and performer Valérie Reding.
2020 HAU 2, Berlin-D, Sunrise Sunset, scenography for the performance by choreographer and performer Przemek Kaminski.
2020 Schauspielhaus Bochum-D, Geister, sculptures for the theater performance directed by Florian Fischer.
2019 Sofiensaele, Berlin-DE, Inflammations, sculptures for the performance of choreographer Ania Nowak.
2019 Gessnerallee, Zürich-CH, Maintaining stranger, sculptures for the performance from Simone Aughterlony.
2019 Arsenic, Lausanne-CH, CLSTRS, with dancer Krassen Krastev on the scenography and sculptures for the performance and as an performer.
2018 U-Jazdowski Center for Contemporary Arts, Warsaw-PL, Emotional landscape, sculpture event with the collective KEM.
2018 The Place, London-UK, Slug horizon, with artists Florence Peake and Eve Stainton on the scenography and sculptures.
2018 Eigen & Art Lab, Berlin-DE/ Roehrs and Boetsch, Zürich-CH, Threesome, with photographer Manon Wertebroek and designer Julian Zigerli on a trans-disciplinary travelling exhibition.
2017 Tanzhaus, Zürich-CH, Stand in, culptures for the performance from artists Jennifer Rosenblit.
2017 Zürich moves! 2017, Zürich-CH, On rituals and remedies in troubling times, collaboration for the performance laboratory led by Simone Aughterlony.
2016 La Placette/Die Diele/Zqm, Lausanne-CH/Zürich-CH/Berlin-CH, Les émotions spatiales, with artist Charlotte Herzig and curator Elise Lammer on travelling exhibitions and performances.
2016 Arsenic, Lausanne-CH, Holes and Hills, scenography and sculptures for the performance from Julia Perazzini.
2015 Vacancy gallery, Los Angeles-USA, Suddenly I see crystal clear, collaborative exhibition with Daniel V. Keller.
2015 One Work gallery, Vienna-AT, Casual vitamin, collaborative exhibition with Daniel V. Keller.
2014 Charleroi Danse, Bruxelles-B, Elephant rock, wearable sculptures for the performance of Transniagara: danser Jonathan Schatz and musician Kapser T.Toeplitz.
2014 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts / YBCA, San Francisco-USA, Jungle Buena, with artists Bailey Hikawa and Lisa Rybovich Crallé on sculpture installation and performances.
2013 Di Rosa, Napa-USA, Talk my language, with artists Bailey Hikawa and Lisa Rybovich Crallé on sculpture installation and performances.
2013 Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts/ MC_BA, Lausanne-CH, with Transniagara: dancer Jonathan Schatz and musician Kapser T.Toeplitz in the frame of the exhibition Forms and lovers.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 Musée Cantonal des Beaux-arts de Lausanne/ MC-BA, La collection.
2020 Mikro, Zürich-CH, Intimate estrangement with Yael Wicki Neira.
2019 B3IGE, Copenhagen-DK, Drag and drop, with Johann Ludin and Sofia Wickman.
2018 Le Manoir de Martigny, Martigny-CH, Pour Elle – Marguerite Burnat-Provins.
2018 Corner college, Zürich-CH, Art work(ers).
2017 Duve Gallery, Berlin-DE, Hurzlmeier/Füllemann.
2017 Nicolas Krupp gallery, Basel-DE, Utopias are more or less fascistic.
2017 Museum Rietberg, Zürich-CH, Carnage.
2017 Helmhaus, Zürich-CH, Stadt Zürich Work und Atelierstipenden 2017.
2016 Duve Gallery, Berlin-D, Vita Parcours.
2015 Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel-CH, Stipendium Vordemberge-Gildewart.
2015 Swiss Art Awards, Basel-CH, Swiss Art Awards 2015.
2014 Swiss Art Awards, Basel-CH, Swiss Art Awards 2014.
2014 Bex et Art, Bex-CH, Emergences.
2013 Popular Workshop, San Francisco-USA, Schrödiger’s cat.
2012 Phoenix Hotel, San Francisco-USA, Room 11.
2012 Another Year in LA, Los Angeles-USA, Sculpture (California).
2011 Swiss Art Awards, Basel-CH, Swiss Art Awards 2011.
2011 Motiers 2011, Motiers-CH, Art en plein air.
2010 The Swell gallery, San Francisco-USA, Come inside.
2010 Swiss Art Awards, Basel-CH, Swiss Art Awards 2010.
2010 Espace Arlaud, Lausanne-CH, Panic.
2009 Forde, Geneva-CH, I am by birth a Genevese.
2007 Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne/MC-BA, Lausanne-CH, Accrochage.
RESIDENCIES
2018 AIR artist in residency, U-Jazdowski Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw-PL.
2015 Kunsthalle Roveredo, Roveredo-CH.
2014 MAD agency, Paris-F, La Sira.
WORKSHOPS
2020 Geneva University of Art and Design / HEAD, Geneva-CH, Atelier Performance and set design, BFA fashion students
2020 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, Collaborative online workshop, BFA students
2019 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, Join the adventure workshop, BFA students
2018 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, Al pensée tentaculaire, BFA students.
2017 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, Les idées materialisées, BFA students.
2016 LUNG A festival, Seydisfördur-IS, How to become a stone in the time of social media.
2015 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, On queer objects, MFA students.
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES
2016-18 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, Scientific collaborator MAPS/Master of Arts in Public Spheres.
2016 University of Art and Design Wallis / EDHEA, Sierre-CH, Ad interim Head of MAPS/Master of Arts in Public Spheres.
PUBLICATIONS
2020 La collection, Eds. Musée cantonal des beaux-arts de Lausanne and Schneidegger & Spiess, Zürich
2018 Pour Elle – Marguerite Burnat-Provins, Eds. Federica Martini and Anne Jean-Richard, EDHEA Press.
2017 Carnage. The subversive potential of Grotesque, Ed. Francesca Brusa, Museum Rietberg Press.
2014 Der Haken and der Skulptur, Daniel Morgenthaler, Kunstbulletin 7-8/2014.
For this show, Christopher Füllemann has created a viewing rhythm in the gallery space consisting of different moments and different viewing experiences, which ultimately form a brief, wonderful journey into the young artist’s powerful, joyful, sensuous universe.
A Swiss artist based in California, where he graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with an MFA in sculpture after earning a BA at ECAL, Füllemann always closely reacts to the existing space when creating and installing his sculptures – scale and rhythm, color and texture all concur to create works which call for a physical, tactile, almost bodily apprehension. Found objects and ephemeral materials such as fabric, latex, foam, glass, wax, ceramic or even plants interact to exist in space not as isolated objects, but as elements of a movement in which the viewer is involved. Lately, Füllemann has also started working with leather, fascinated by the material’s possibilities and intrinsic proximity with actual bodies. But materials are never put to use in their “natural” state – rather, they are used for their physical properties (how fabric folds, how wax drops when melted, etc.) and then transformed, often through the use of paint, or solidified with epoxy, ultimately passing for something other than what they are. Color is the unifying element, elevation and gravity the driving tension behind Füllemann’s sculptural accumulations, space their necessary frame.
As the artist states: I started making sculptures in both a formal and a sensitive way, by assembling simple, often architectural shapes, into a form that is complemented by various fragile substances, giving my sculptures the aspect of pictorial compositions akin to ephemeral monuments. The anthropomorphic aspect of my works induced through scale and shape plays with the desire to see these three-dimensional collages as performers and as living or growing organisms. I want my sculptures to generate more energetic feelings than the visible. Movement and autonomy are thus important aspects, allowing my pieces to exist in conversation with the viewer, the space and amongst each other.
In the exhibition at Rotwand, the viewer moves from a first encounter with one of Christopher Füllemann’s sculptures, set like a mural on the wall facing the entrance, to the main room where the artist invites us to rest in what can best be described as a garden. A buffer between domestic space and wilderness, punctuated by small sculptures whose scale seems to imply a tamed version of the larger installations, but which can also be read as their concentrated avatars, ready to burst at the next, yet to be imagined stage. Their ambivalent character – part object/part sculpture, part utilitarian/part abstract, part living/part inert – recall the artist’s recent, monumental sculptures set on wheels or adorned with handles, in which he explores the tension between looking and touching, between what an object stands for and its potential activation by the audience, between a mundane shape and its potential subversion.
Lastly, in the third stage of the show, a stunning, eccentric sculpture stands erect. Like many of the artist’s creatures, this sculpture is shaped from the remains of a former sculpture, having first lived as a monumental chain of skin-like color stretched across a room of the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, in 2013, then as an outdoor sculpture for the rest of the year. What was once horizontal now rises as a vertical body, covered by layers of new skin, hovering between elevation and collapse, between stillness and movement, between balance and fall, between sensual attraction and repulsion, between sculpture and flesh.
Text Nicole Schweizer
