"On a very special project to design an official Swiss gold coin dedicated to the watchmaking industry, i took my time to create and paint a planetary timemachine to be eternalized in gold. The limited artist-coin edition is manufactured in a breathtaking level of details and precision by "Swissmint" and will be released this week on Thursday, 29. Sept 2022.

As an artist from Biel/Bienne, the Swiss city of watchmaking, I have always been fascinated by the technical precision of watchmaking and it‘s artistic constructions. On the other hand, I am driven by an endless fascination for the very big questions such as the mystery of time. Everywhere in the cosmic clockwork we recognize analogies between the micro- and macrocosm. As in the small - so in the large. On this parallel arises a work of art about the small and large wheels of time and their place in our world view."

The artwork shows a monumental timemachine in the core of our world. Symbolic of the global radiance of watches as time-machines, which distinguish Switzerland and its watch industry and keep our world under the spell of time. The planetary construct of the work was realized in a mixture of masterful painting techniques in a surreal oilpainting on a 150cm x 150cm canvas and then transformed by the artist into the miniature form of the highly detailed 20mm coin.

WES sees his timemachine on the gold coin as symbolic methaphor with a valuable insight:

"If time is money - money is time too"

SOLO EXHIBITION BY WES 21 / REMO LIENHARD

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, 2022

"Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein

Surrounded by a fantastic world full of nature and technology at the same time - transferred into a utopian reality. That's how it feels when the works of the Biel-based artist Remo Lienhard / WES 21 hang in front of you. In his upcoming solo exhibition "PARALLEL UNIVERSE" at SOON Gallery, the artist opens a portal into a parallel universe, into a surreal landscape infused with fictional devices, objects, figures. Visitors are invited to see the visual worlds from a different perspective, losing themselves in the depths of composition and color palette.
 
The exhibition shows a diverse range of large-format paintings of impressive sceneries, picturesque landscapes, abstract architecture, supernatural beings and unreal objects. Stylistically confident and with a distinctive visual language, he transforms brilliant ideas into magnificent modern works of art with inspiring expressiveness and depth of content.
 
After the School of Design in Biel, WES dedicates himself to contemporary art and works as a freelance artist. In recent decades, he established himself as a respected protagonist of a subculture-movement that artfully affects your immediate environment and actively shapes our present. From house-sized murals to oil painting, illustration to sculpture, he serves a diverse spectrum of art forms and skillfully and innovatively transforms masterful techniques into the future. His work enjoys an international reputation and has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and renowned art fairs around the world.

SOLO EXHIBITION BY WES 21 / REMO LIENHARD

BERN, SWITZERLAND, 2019

Back from a studio scholarship in Berlin, the artist from Biel, Switzerland, is showing his latest works in Bern. With his paintings, Remo Lienhard creates impressive visual worlds that captivate the viewer. They show representational motifs borrowed from nature and civilization, which he painterly fuses into stylish subjects. Each work tells its own story, draws utopian visions or illuminates the artist's astute observations.

"The Missing Link" is Lienhard's fourth solo exhibition at Galerie SOON and presents itself in a production that builds a bridge to past exhibition and collection concepts. The exhibition situation ties in with the early modern „Kunstkammer“ and cabinets of curiosities that rulers, princes and scholars established in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. These collection rooms, in which precious works of art, rare natural objects, scientific objects and curiosities from foreign worlds were stored, constantly amazed visitors.

Lienhard defines his depictions of imaginative situations, hybrid creatures and surreal landscapes, which fit effortlessly into this context, as natural-historical fiction or illusory reality. The unmistakable visual language, which the gifted painter has consistently developed and refined for dozens of years, is certainly also decisive for this. His artfully created works not only impress with their love of detail, sophisticated composition and colour palette, but also skillfully and innovatively transform old masterly traditions into our future.

Remo Lienhard (*1989) experimented with brushes and spray cans at an early age and made a name for himself as WES 21. Since graduating from the School of Design in Biel in 2010, he has devoted himself to contemporary art.

PUBLIC ART EXHIBITION IN BIEL, SWITZERLAND, 2021

 This painting comes alive on a full moon.

Astronomically synchronized with the final

exhibition night of our multidimensional art

installation at FlairExpo in Biel, Switzerland

19.03.2021 - 28.03.2021

__

A scientific experiment by

WES 21 / Remo Lienhard and

MAG Design / Marc-André Gasser

300cm x 150cm x 290cm
anamorphic painting on wood
16 minutes video loop

MORE DETAILS AND INFORMATION

URBAN  NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART

BERLIN, GERMANY, 2018

Urban contemporary art scouts out its place in the city. But art also craves freedom, space to let ideas grow, where talent is honed, and style and technology experience encouragement. With the Artist in Residence Programme, brought to life by the museum’s curator Yasha Young, URBAN NATION offers artists a chance within the scope of a unique programme to freely unfold their creativity. These upcoming artists have access to eleven flats where they have the opportunity to fully focus on their creative process. In this way, URBAN NATION enables artists from all over the world to stay in Berlin, one of urban contemporary art’s creative centres. They are invited to network, socialise and bounce around ideas, supported by professional mentoring sessions with Yasha Young.

GROUP EXHIBITION / ART FAIR

MOSCOW, RUSSIA, 2016

This year 42 foreign and 26 Russian artists who have been formed inspired by street art are going to be introduced at the capital’s central exhibition area in Moscow Manege. This will be a multicuratorial project: international curators, museums and galleries are presenting the artists whose main specialty is street art. Each of those is representing that street art layer he or she works with and considers to be interesting to show. The project is of a unique nature– all the works will be made by the artists during art residencies in Moscow.

GROUP EXHIBITION AT JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY

NEW YORK, USA, 2015

Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present Brotherhood, a group exhibition curated by Yasha Young featuring works by Anders Gjennestad, Andreas Englund, David Walker, DOTDOTDOT, Ernest Zacharevic, Evoca1, Icy and Sot, James Bullough, Li-Hill, M-City, Nick Walker, Shepard Fairey, Tankpetrol and WES 21. In conjunction with Brotherhood, a limited edition zine will be released as well as a selection of exclusive limited edition prints by some of the artists.

In the mid-19th century a group of young men formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with the goal of reforming the art establishment by rejecting the mannerist approach, believing academic teaching only corrupted an artist. They instead placed emphasis on the personal responsibility of an artist to determine ideas and methods, hoping to revert back to the abundant detail, intense colors and complex compositions of early Renaissance art. Their debates and ideas were published in a periodical called The Germ in hopes that creative ideas would be born.

This exhibition is based on the core ideas of the Brotherhood. Curator Yasha Young describes, “The truth is, not much has changed when it comes to critics and institutions accepting new ideas. We are still caught within rigid frameworks and the need to justify ‘good’ art with the presence of an art school education overshadows the strength and talent of many contemporary artists. Techniques arising from the underground might be excepted if they come with already established monetary success, which is also only reserved for a few. However, change can happen by showing work amongst peers, supporting each other’s work and extending the creative exchange far beyond intellectual or geographical borders.”