Sebastian Utzni

(*1981 Augsburg, Germany, lives and works in Zurich and is a lecturer at the Department of Design & Art at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts) moves like a free agent through the possibilities of art making. Duchampian variations of the ready made, political implications before 9/11 in cartoons, M-Maybe, 2016/17, are just as well subjects of his practice as the analyses in a video of 286 Rules of Acquisition of the Ferengi, an ultra-capitalist race from the Star Trek TV series. Flanerie is the foundation of Sebastian Utzni’s approach, investigating the dividing lines between art and life, politics and science. For a series of Prediction paintings Sebastian Utzni has put on his scientific overall. He asked different players in the art world which paintings achieve the record sale at auction in 2019. He relied on a computer program to analyse these pictures for the used colours. The program then broke them down to five colours each. Similar colours were combined until five colours were left. The program used the colour system of the 1625 standardized RAL colors. The upper half of the Prediction Paintings are to be read like info graphics: The size of the circle indicates the frequency of the colour used. Since each RAL colour is assigned a unique number as well as a description, the percentage use and the name of the colours can be read in the lower part. Sebastian Utzni’s approach is not merely critical towards the art market; – his stance is more one of a neutral scientific observer, letting appear in highly glossed works in enamel paint on a champagne chalk ground the beauty of painting in colour dots. Utzni always astonishes anew and surprises us with intelligent and thoughtful works of art.

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