The Artist is Present

The Artist is Present was created during an artist residency in Grisons (Switzerland). At the finissage I positioned myself at a particularly busy spot on the art trail to paint the paint-by-numbers painting Peaceful Mountain Landscape. The performance was a response to the instrumentalisation of the participating artists by the programme, which seemed to be in the service of local tourism marketing. The (re-)production of the alpine cliché reaches a kitschy climax and unmasks it as a projection surface of idyll.