Manor Art Prize exhibition features Dominik Zietlow's kaleidoscopic portrait of Lucerne

LUCERNE.- Dominik Zietlow (*1988) is being awarded the Manor Art Prize, one of the most important Swiss promotional prizes for the fine arts. Nur die Berge begegnen sich nie (Only the mountains never meet) is the title of the exhibition in which the filmmaker is showing his latest works related to Lucerne. The exhibition title references an old saying: mountains cannot alter their position, whereas people are in a position to encounter one another—also in a metaphorical sense. This approach distinguishes Zietlow as a filmmaker: he creates a space of exchange, listens attentively and observes with empathy.

Zietlow grew up in Lucerne, his place of birth, however, is merely the artist's point of departure for his kaleidoscopic city portrait Holz, aus dem die Menschen sind (Wood which people are made of), 2026. On the one hand, the title takes up a sentence by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." On the other hand, the title of the work alludes to turns of phrase suggesting that someone is cut from the same, from a different, from good or from hard wood. In this work, Zietlow takes both a performative and a documentary approach: a fictional jester-like figure holding a clapper guides us through Carnival. This instrument once warned against people with the plague; now it shapes the film's soundtrack. As the figure walks through the city, the takes of the triangular paintings in the Dance of Death cycle between the rafters of the Spreuer Bridge in Lucerne draw attention to the fact that we all are equal in the face of death. The rattling sound therefore works in a similar way to the images on the bridge—as a memento mori. The scenes featuring the fictional character were filmed using an analogue 16 mm camera, which was wound by hand, with the result that the speed of the film varies, while the independently recorded soundtrack continues. Zietlow is interested in this asynchrony between sound and image. Two analogue photography series complement the film. Sieben Stillstände (Seven Standstills) shows selected scenes from the 16mm film strip. For Drei Zustände (Three States), the artist superimposed a layer of text onto the large-format negatives and exposed them directly as contact prints. The text consists of verses from the Dance of Death panel The Clockmaker in three languages.

In the multi-part work Le rouge dans le bleu (The Red in the Blue), 2026, we see people having a phone conversation in the public domain. Their anxieties, worries and thoughts become superimposed with the respective scenes, creating a social portrait of the city of Paris.

Zietlow's works are characterized by existential questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? How do we position ourselves in the world? A precise choice of means and reflections on the media always play a role in Zietlow's works. In the artist's own words: "Observing the world with a camera means focussing on one aspect. Fuoco—the Italian word for fire—is the focal point of a magnifying glass, where concentrated rays of light set something alight. My aim is to ignite reality, release energy and reflect on it artistically."

Curated by Eveline Suter