Christoph Büchel

Christoph Büchel (born 1966) is a Swiss artist, based since 2007 in Iceland.

Biography

Christoph Büchel was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1966.^[1] Büchel creates hyper-realistic environments that create the experience of walking into a mind at work.

Controversy

For the 2015 Venice Biennale, Christoph Büchel submitted as part of Iceland's national pavilion The Mosque: The First Mosque in the Historic City of Venice, partly inspired by disputes in Iceland over building the first purpose-built Reykjavík Mosque.^[2][3]

One installation was a conceptual work of art which transformed a 10th-century Catholic church into a generic mosque.^[4]

Critics of the Venetian Authorities claim that the proffered reasons for shuttering the mosque were pretextual and insufficiently grave to justify closure of the work.^[5]

References

External links

• Christoph Büchel on Artfacts
• Hauser & Wirth