Master Project

Kristina Grigorjeva

Life is one of the best, this is not a commercial


8.06.–01.09.2019
Veli&Amos
Gasträume 2019, Lowenbräukunst-Turbinenplatz

Supported by KiöR, Center for alternative coconut research, SGMK, FabLab, Galerie Barbara Seiler
Curated by Kristina Grigorjeva

As part of the „Gasträume 2019“ project announced by the City of Zurich, the artist duo Veli&Amos will use art in public space to address the public itself. Although the public sphere today is the site of an intercultural globalized dialogue, in the fast-moving society of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook the fundamental question is how we can still position and express ourselves in the public sphere. Both digital culture and the real public sphere are equally shaped by advertising and consumer behaviour. It is precisely these aspects that art can absorb, reflect on and subversively address. For this reason, we would like to create a place in Zurich that takes up and presents these connections, but also allows us to go beyond them by stimulating participative forms of publicity.

Graffiti, Spraypaint, Billboards: The examination of the culture of the street is a central theme in the works of the Zurich artist duo Veli & Amos. With their works, performances and films, the artists not only play with and at the border between art, commissioned art and commerce, but also with the glory of the street. They contribute their own experience to artistic statements, through which they enable fresh perspectives on the state of society. With their work „Life is one of the best, this is not a commercial“, Veli & Amos offer the Turbinenplatz the summer of a billboard dedicated to moments of real public life. An old monotonously coloured Volvo is placed on the gravel floor of the Turbinenplatz. A light metal construction with two billboards reminiscent of advertisements on the famous American streets in the desert is mounted on top of it. The medium of advertising and consumption is transformed into a living stimulus for the audience, by establishing something obvious: life is something of the most beautiful! This simple statement directs the gaze away from digital noise towards the world.
In addition, this is supported by the interactive function of the work, which allows you to share your own sound with the public via a Bluetooth connection, similar to a piano at a train station.

With generous support from KiöR, Civil Engineering Office City of Zurich

Veli & Amos
Veli & Amos are a Swiss-Slovenian artist duo. Their work uses language, codes and the energy of graffiti and activism to draw attention to the problems and limits of our contemporary reality. They explore public space and pop culture, in order to translate their knowledge into site-specific art or media-specific art. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, the HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles, the Helmhaus and the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst.

Kristina Grigorjeva (*1990, Estonia) is an architect and an independent curator born in Tallinn, Estonia and based in Zürich. After studying architecture at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, TI and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences she has worked for Caruso St John Architects in Zurich, where she has combined her architecture practice with diverse international curatorial projects. Her latest collaborations include the British Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2018 and Gasträume 2019, a KiöR project for art in public spaces commissioned by the city of Zurich, as well as past and on-going collaborations with institution and galleries like Architekturforum Zurich and Kulturfolger. Currently she works for Museum für Gestaltung at the Pavilion Le Corbusier and is working on the ongoing exhibition series detours, that explores the relationship between art and the public in the fast-paced society of today.