~HARD HAT/HR GIGER/opens to-nite

HR GIGER – ‘Biomechanoid’, 1969
OPENING To-NITE / THURS SEPT 15, 2011 / 6-9 PM
the show runs SEPT 15 – OCT 16, 2011

HARD HAT – 39, rue des Bains, Geneve, Switzerland

Hard Hat is proud to present two historical series by HR GIGER.

Biomechanoid, eight plates from 1969, brings into focus for the first time many of the themes and formal tropes that will define the Swiss artist’s works in the following decades: a fusion between flesh and machine brewing in the concrete entrails of a future necropolis. Infused with a chilling eroticism each plate repeats, permutes and transforms a series of motifs, accounting for the successive states of the gestation of some incredible creature.

Passagen, four photographic silkscreens form 1971, repeat a single motif, printed each time in a different two-color scheme. This nightmarish image – a detail of a garbage truck – stands halfway between a vaginal orifice and the entrance of a forbidding mechanical world.

Made at a time when HR Giger’s work was predominantly shown with in the mainstream field of contemporary art, these neo-Symbolist works display an acute Pop sensibility. Both series were published by BRUNO BISHOPBERGER . . .
~from the HARD HAT press release