Gallery Hergiswil dedicated René Mayer’s first major retrospective, presenting a significant selection of 17 paintings and 27 sculptures representing fifty years of artistic creation.
Simply titled Paintings and Sculptures, the exhibition offered a rare opportunity to explore the breadth and depth of the Swiss artist’s work. Trained at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel under the direct influence of the Bauhaus, Mayer blends precise craftsmanship with creative intuition, producing works that are both rigorous and sensitive.
Among the featured series, Imperceptible Shift and Moving Earth address contemporary ecological and social issues, while Eyes explores the intimate encounter between gaze and emotion. The sculptural series Viva Viva pays tribute to collective vitality and folk traditions through brightly colored terracotta figures.
Under the provocative title Happy Anxiety, René Mayer presented his works in a solo exhibition at AtelierRoshi in Baar, bringing together two of his iconic series: Imperceptible Shift and Viva Viva.
Through this pairing, Mayer delicately explores the coexistence of joy and anxiety, urgency and optimism in response to the changes we are all facing.
In Imperceptible Shift, the paintings incorporate hundreds of brightly colored casino chips, gradually embedded to reflect the slow environmental and societal shifts we are witnessing-almost without noticing.
In contrast, Viva Viva radiates joy and lightness. It is a vibrant explosion of lively shapes, luminous colors, and spontaneous connections, embodied in terracotta sculptures inspired by Mexican folk art.
René Mayer took part in the group exhibition Kesismeler | Intersections, organized by the Vision Art Platform gallery in Istanbul. Curated by Firat Arapoglu, a prominent figure in contemporary Turkish art, the exhibition brought together established artists from both the local and international scenes.
René Mayer’s entry into the Turkish art market drew attention from both the public and the press, notably with media coverage by GQ Turkey.
This exhibition marks an important milestone in René Mayer’s international presence and opens promising prospects for future collaborations in Turkey and beyond.
René Mayer took part in the group exhibition Artistes unis pour l’eau, organized by the gallery Fresa y Chocolate by Dayami Hayek in Vevey, in collaboration with the association What Water.
This solidarity initiative aimed to support water access projects in regions of West Africa through the sale of artworks and donations collected during the exhibition.
René Mayer presented works from the Imperceptible Shift series, whose complex textures and abstract compositions reflect the invisible transformations affecting our environment. Using casino chips, he questions our relationship to ecological risk: “We gamble with the Earth as if it were a casino.”
His subtle yet committed work fitted perfectly with the spirit of this group exhibition, which brought together fourteen artists around a shared cause, including Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo.
The exhibition Imperceptible Shift, curated by Luca Beatrice, the late president of the Rome Quadriennale, was held during the summer of 2024 at SAB, Spazio Arte Bubbio, in Italy. It featured 30 recent abstract works and invited reflection on the elusiveness of change.
Everything transforms imperceptibly – and constantly! These shifts are so subtle that we only notice them when it’s too late.
Everything is crushed and remixed, both in the intimacy of a couple and in the vastness of the world.
Around fifteen articles appeared in Piedmont’s cultural media, including an in-depth piece on the Artribune website.
SAB Spazio Arte Bubbio was founded on the initiative of René Mayer, who wanted Bubbio to have a modern cultural space dedicated to still little-known contemporary artists from Piedmont. In autumn 2023, a selection of René Mayer’s works was presented alongside the works of promising artists in the inaugural exhibition of SAB Spazio Arte Bubbio.
In the deconsecrated Chapel San Sebastiano in Bergolo – a tiny but culturally active village in Piedmont – René Mayer held his first exhibition in 2021, with the support of a professor and curator who had discovered his work almost by chance. The success of the exhibition led to its extension beyond the original end date.
