Ruben

Wyttenbach

Ab

out

After working in social education at the age of 21, Ruben Wyttenbach went on to study free art at the F+F School of Art and Media Design in Zurich. He later studied documentary photography at the MAZ in Lucerne. In 2020, he earned a Master’s in Contemporary Arts Practice from Bern University of the Arts. He is a member of “Near,” a Lausanne-based photography network, and of the Zurich-based photography agency “13photo.” He has been teaching photography in adult education since 2018.

Ruben has been working on freelance commissions since 2007. His portraits and pictures have appeared in major magazines, newspapers and annual reports, in Switzerland and Europe. His subjects include federal councillors, the Swiss business elite as well as international politicians and people in the arts and culture. He also works for many corporate agencies and companies in various businesses and industries.

In 2017, he published Strand am Berg (Beach on the Mountain), a photography book comprising not only photographs but also texts, which were created in collaboration with the authors. During his Master’s at Bern University of the Arts, Ruben explored an expanded and new form of photographic representation of nature. In 2020, he founded “Courant Normal, the artistic selfie, an examination of one’s own identity,” an inter- and transdisciplinary art education project committed to fostering a positive body image in association with health promotion specialists and young people. The project has been running at an upper secondary school since summer 2021.


His artistic projects deal with the “environment,” adopting either a phenomenological, technical or social approach. In exploring these spaces, Ruben looks for objects and things that, within a photographic framework, only refer to actual places as a trace and can be read as a metaphor of an expanded reality. The deliberate search for pictorial openness, as well as for the new and unexpected, often play a central role in his work. In other artistic works, he frequently engages with questions of identity.

Exhibitions

2020

2020

2019

2019

2019

Hier Einschlagen. Forum A, MA Cap HKB Bern, Group Exhibition

2018

Etwas ist nicht so wie ich es mir vorstelle. Forum A, MA Cap HKB Bern, Group Exhibition

2017

2013

Photoprice Canton of Bern 2013, Group Exhibition, Nomination

2013

Photo 13, Maag Hall, Zürich, Group Exhibition

2012

Swiss Press Photo 2012, Landesmuseum Zürich, Group Exhibition

2011

Photo 11, Maag Hall, Zürich, Group Exhibition

2010

Photo 10, Maag Hall, Zürich, Group Exhibition

2000

POP, Black Box Aarau, Group Exhibition

2000

Behind The Line, Black Box Aarau, Group Exhibition

Awards,
Grants &
Scolarships

2021

Grant, Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz. For the Projekt «Courant Normal, das künstlerische Selfie»

2021

Grant, Wettbewerbes tête à tête des Amtes für Kultur Kanton Bern. For the Projekt «Courant Normal, das künstlerische Selfie»

2014

Grant, Projektförderung des Kantons Bern für Fotografie. For the Book Projekt «Strand am Berg»

Publications

Strand am Berg

Atelier Kornhaus, Agency
Melanie Brandel & Stephan Nopper, Art Direction
Melanie Brandel, Design
Ruben Wyttenbach, Project Manager
Sturm & Drang Verlag, Reto Caduff, Publisher

Order Book

What forms of narrative and documentation can do justice to a project characterized by constant change? It is impossible to survey the whole, draw a representative map or establish a universal chronology. Instead, individual stories, personal statements and subjective images are like multiple facets contributing their part to the bigger picture. Their function is exemplary rather than special – appearing as if selected by chance, dredged to the surface or washed upon the shore. What about the bigger picture they evoke, the Heitere Fahne– is it a place, a location, a building, or a shared idea?

The images were taken over a period of three years, on the margins of the main action. The participants’ thoughts, recorded as short written notes, reveal vision and delusion, utopia and reality, pleasure and despair of this intensive experiment to turn a collective dream into reality. The guest house in Wabern near Bern – origin of local craft beer and later a pub attached to the former “Gurten-Brewery” – became a potent symbol of an experiment dedicated to a collective site for culture. The images and texts act like snapshots: atmospheric impressions with distinct shutter speeds, depths of focus and angles. They are traces; personal and subjective references to a whole, not requiring any interpretation. As fragments, they suggest the diversity and complexity of such a participatory undertaking.

Network

Near
Swiss association for contemporary photography
1000 Lausanne

info@near.li



Art Education

Courant Normal, founded by Ruben Wyttenbach was selected as part of the tête-à-tête competition of the Cultural Promotion of the Canton of Bern in cooperation with the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. The innovation project is supported by Health Promotion Switzerland and the City of Nidau. A project by Ruben Wyttenbach and Benjamin Sunarjo.