GLACÉGARTEN (ZÜRICH, 1999)
At the end of 1998, I returned to Zurich after spending two and a half years traveling
abroad. The city was dull, there was nothing going on. The hype surrounding my first
museum exhibition “A Clear View of the Mediterranean“ in the Kunsthaus Zurich had
died down. New protagonists of the art scene were in place and being passed around,
the techno scene entered a symbiosis with the commerce, and protesters were sitting
in their centrally heated villas running vegan soup kitchens.
During my nightly walks
through the desolate town I couldn‘t help noticing omnipresent colorful stickers with
whimsical images of animals. The stickers were everywhere, glued to lampposts, traffic
lights and tram stops. On closer inspection I realized that all the subjects were hand-
drawn. I often wondered who the artist was who covered the city with these unique
works of art. As everyone knows, Zurich is a village, so I was sure that I would even-
tually bump into the creator of these one-off signature pieces. Since the squatting of
the Wohlgroth factory there had been no other culturally initiated squatting going on
in Zurich, and all attempts to take over a building had failed. In late autumn of ‚99 I
rounded up a few activists and moved into the empty canteen of the Steinfels AG in
the Heinrichstrasse. The object was situated on the future site of a Cinemax, and all
around us diggers had begun tearing down the old factory. We managed to convince the
owners to have the canteen demolished last, and so we had a blast for five weeks, while
the wrecking balls were crashing into the walls around us. During this interim cultural
use the Glacegarten hosted a multitude of events on weekends.
The curious stormed the doors. For our illegal activities we received a lot of encouragement
from a broad section of culture enthusiasts and realized that there was a high demand for spaces
providing non-commercial events in Zurich.
Again I saw the colorful stickers with the distinctive streak, this time in our toilets.
Later that night DJ John Player told me at the bar that he knew who created these works
and offered to introduce me. The next day we visited Mickry 3 in their studio. The three
artists worked in a hut cobbled together from roofing tiles and tarpaulin, hidden in the
far away corner of an unheated warehouse. In this makeshift shack we drank tea together
and they showed me the first pieces of their supermarket collection. The large and small
hand-drawn characters were neatly sealed in plastic foil and laid out on table tops. The-
re were several variations of each character, and each was assigned to a particular super-
market department. Dominique told me that they had already spent a year working on this
mammoth installation and it would take another two years until all product lines were
completed. The concept was simple, intuitive, whereas the jazzy, sassy implementation of
the idea would set collectors‘ hearts racing. The three ladies impressed me so much that I
decided to invite them to our next event in two weeks, a collective exhibition in the Glacégarten.
The little art show curated by Ingo Giezendanner and myself would prove a tremendous
success. We managed to attract lots of collectors and art enthusiasts. This exhibition was high-
lighted by Mickry 3’s installation, them hawking a hundred blondes and raisins sealed in plastic
at the fabulous bargain price of six francs fifty. By the end of the night they had sold out.
ARTISTS: Eva von Wartburg / Eric Schuhmacher / Ingo Giezendanner / Mark Divo
Nicoletta Wartmann / Susan Walder / Teresa Pereira / Marcel Kühne
Mickry 3 / Brisant
