Dieter Meier, born in 1945 in Zurich, is one of Switzerland’s most versatile artistic personalities. After studying law, he turned early to conceptual art, performance and music. He gained international attention through his participation in documenta 5 in Kassel (1972), where his conceptual works and performances established him as one of the defining figures of European conceptual art. In 1976, the Kunsthaus Zurich hosted an exhibition of works by Dieter Meier entitled Works 1974-1976. In the 1980s Meier achieved worldwide fame as the singer and lyricist of the duo Yello. Alongside his musical career, he developed an independent visual practice that encompasses photography, film, text and object-based art. His works move between irony and precision, play and structure, and reflect on questions of identity, time and staging in complex and poetic ways. Today, Dieter Meier lives and works in Zurich.
The upcoming exhibition offers an unusual perspective on the multifaceted work of Dieter Meier. Through a selection of photographic works complemented by a recent video installation, image, time and identity enter into a dense dialogue. Meier has always conceived his artistic language as an open system, a continual attempt to challenge the boundaries between reality and representation. The exhibited photographs reveal Meier as a precise observer who, with subtle humor and conceptual rigor, examines the mechanisms of perception and self-image. Rather than functioning as classical documents, these works are experimental arrangements: situations in which the artist embeds himself directly within the act of seeing. Meier often operates simultaneously as author, subject and object of his own images, a play of roles and attributions that is as analytical as it is poetic.
A particular focus is placed on Meier’s small modeled figures, which he shapes, photographs and annotates with brief texts or names. These spontaneous gestures, emerging from movement, carry a paradoxical poetry: barely formed, they already stand in transition, as objects between becoming and dissolution. Through photographic documentation, Meier transforms the ephemeral into a narrative moment, shifting from sculptural gesture to visual metaphor. The clay figures evoke the relationship between form and time, the fleeting, and the act of seeing as a creative process. These themes continue to resonate in his video works.
Another focus lies on the One Minute Drawings, a series of spontaneous drawings created in real time. In these works, Meier’s performative approach condenses into its most immediate form. Each drawing is produced without correction, as the trace of a single moment. The lines—often raw, sketch-like and yet precise—record not only the movement of the hand but also the instant of decision. These works reveal Meier’s pleasure in risk and in the relinquishing of control, an attitude that runs like a continuous thread through his entire oeuvre.
Meier’s works have been shown in numerous renowned institutions, including major solo exhibitions at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau (2013), the Falckenberg Collection/Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2011, in cooperation with the ZKM Karlsruhe) and the Kunsthaus Zurich (1976). Further presentations have taken place at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen. His works are represented in major public collections, including the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the Lenbachhaus Munich and the Falckenberg Collection in Hamburg.