LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND

2016 recipients : Reichrichter

Video still from The House and the World, 2015/10, Reichrichter

By supporting young talented artist, The LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND keep alive and challenge Lewis's vision. He was also highly sensitive to the fact that the creation of any real art form is sustained by the sharp and thorough vision of the world we live in — « Using facts, to create fictions, that reveal truths » (L.B).

The LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND has been established to honor the vision and memory of the American artist Lewis Baltz. The fund involves the annual grant of a substantial fund to support the creation, completion and dissemination of a project in any artistic medium, encompassing, but not limited to, anything from academic research to book publication, performance or installation art, video or film production to experimental digital work. The intention is to support projects reflecting the intellectual rigor of Lewis Baltz’s conceptual practice which also succeeded in propounding a significant connection to social and political issues. The recipient will be selected by the LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND Committee, composed of Mark McCain, art fiend, Theresa Luisotti and Thomas Zander, gallerists, Slavica Perkovic, artist, Michael Mack, publisher, Diane Dufour, director of LE BAL and Urs Stahel, independent curator and guest member of the board this year. Operated by LE BAL, The LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND has been created by the generous support of the Artworkers Retirement Society.

2016 LRBF recipients : Reichrichter

The second Lewis Baltz Research Fund will be awarded to the artist duo REICHRICHTER for their installation project Coming From Orange County.

“Coming from Orange County I watched the ghastly transformation of this place, the first wave of bulimic capitalism sweeping across the land next door to me.”

This quote by Lewis Baltz serves as the conceptual starting point of an investigation into the aesthetic transformations of urban forms and their social uses. Focusing on sites of transition and fluidity like shopping malls or airports in the Greater Los Angeles Area, in the Orange County, the artists will employ fieldwork methods to create photographs, video recordings of interviews and architectural drawings on site.
These elements later re-enter their work in fragmented and fictionalised form, merging into a multimedia installation and publication. With their approach, REICHRICHTER are able to conceptualise human experience of space.

REICHRICHTER, consisting of Rebekka Reich (1969) and Marcus Vila Richter (1968), is an artist duo based in Cologne, Germany, and working transnationally. They studied architecture at Technical University Braunschweig, scenic design at Zurich University of the Arts and cinematography at University of Applied Science Dortmund. Their backgrounds in architecture, dance, scenography, and filmmaking have shaped their sensibility for space and its narratives.