Swiss woman as image agent in South Korea

As an artist's daughter and advertiser, the Zurich-based Tabea Guhl In her career, she has repeatedly found that "advertising and art have far more to do with each other in terms of idea generation and production than would appear at first glance." In both cases, it is about extracting a message from existing content and then packaging it: what media and in what form do you want to communicate? In art, however, the form of the media and the way it appears is "much more unusual, unfamiliar, unique and playful, as the target group is also much more diverse", believes Tabea Guhl.

Interesting request

Due to her international experience not only in advertising, but also as a graphic designer for the artist duo Com & Com, Guhl received a request in January 2010 to support the media art group Etoy with her skills in a first solo show in South Korea. The Etoy team has the philosophy that a group with different skills produces art and that there are no individual artistic geniuses. This is why Guhl, as a direct part of the group, namely as Etoy.Tabea, was able to help conceive and produce the solo show through various phases. "This direct personal involvement, which made me part of the artwork myself, had a particular impact on the collaboration and development." Every move, every sketch and consideration, even every session subsequently became part of a complete work of art. "We followed the rules of Etoy's corporate identity in every form - our sketches were orange, our suitcases were orange, our uniform was always black, white or orange. This strict visual appearance makes identity disappear - in favor of a very diverse unit." The only difference between the individual creators of the group was their different skills and thus different perspectives: Etoy.HG is a new technology expert, Etoy.Vincent a chemist, Etoy.Zai a new media artist, plus a web designer, an open source developer and an interaction designer. This collaboration resulted in an exhibition as an interactive tool. 300 images were made available online on a CSS interface and also shown physically as part of the exhibition.

Art is free and the work was play

Using large screens and small cameras, Etoy processed live Skype sessions into integrated elements of her art or, for example, mounted sensors and microphones on tubes where the children crawled through and transferred these recorded sounds directly to a computer, where they were simultaneously mixed with films. The Swiss installation is now to become part of the Asian Culture Program, which will open in 2014 in the heart of the city of Gwangju. The pavilion is sponsored by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Embassy, Soul, Lista Office, Bernina and Liip. pan

Tabea Guhl

As an art director, Tabea Guhl has developed and realized numerous campaigns at agencies such as Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett and Exxtra Kommunikation. She has won international prizes such as FAB Awards in London, Eurobest, Global Awards and Cannes Lions. Tabea Guhl has also worked as a graphic designer for the artist duo Com & Com, creating corporate designs, websites and books, as well as producing international projects such as road movies in California and exhibitions in the United Arab Emirates. After training as a graphic designer in St. Gallen, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk and gained further experience as an AD at TBWA/Chiat Day in Los Angeles. Since 2008 she has been working as a freelance graphic designer in Zurich, implementing corporate design and homepages and is image agent for the media art group Etoy, where she helped conceive and realize their first major solo show in South Korea in 2010.