During the summer months of 1997, Kurt Caviezel photographs, through his window, the interiors of cars stopping at the red light outside his apartment on a busy Zurich intersection. The view through the 1000 mm tele lens, double-glazed window pane and curved car screen is obstructed by reflected light, mirrorings and slight distortions, acquiring a certain atmospheric distance in its surreptitious encroachment while seeming detached, objective, interested only in passing. The slanted view from above catches a spectacularly commonplace interface between intimacy and public view.
Red Light is fragments of sitting bodies and snatches of expressive body language, a complex, fascinating ballet of gestures and hinted-at movements between steering-wheel and safety-belt, as well as a fleetingly captured inventory of details of car interiors and pieces of clothing, with a wealth of expressive signs and patterns. Red Light is “a stream of information on which the viewer glides along, pouring over the detail of a purse embossed with a heart pattern here, and musing on the assimilation of individualism and anonymity there.” (Hans Danuser)
Kurt Caviezel, born in 1964 in Chur, Switzerland. Since 1990 freelance artist in Zurich. In 1998 parts of Red Light were shown at the group exhibition amanfang at Helmhaus Zurich (curator: Hans Danuser). Red Light is Caviezel’s first book.