A HISTORY THAT LOOKS TO THE FUTURE
Kunsthalle Fribourg (CH), Fri-Art wishes to remain open to all art forms that may arise, and to promote up and coming practices in the arts – even if these were to put its previous approaches and options into doubt.
Sprung literally from the void in 1979, Fri-Art took a running start.
It took several years of tough battles, plenty of perseverance, and a last stand with public support for the Fri-Art Association, born of the passionate commitment of several artists and art lovers of the region, to inaugurate the Centre dArt Contemporain in November 1990. Housed in what used to be a night shelter at the Petites-Rames 22, the Center was directed by Michel Ritter until 2002 and since then by Sarah Zürcher, who is in charge of programming Fri-Art projects and events.
Since the opening of the Centre dArt Contemporain on 10 November 1990, which featured a performance by Irish artist Tara Babel and films by Roman Signer, Fri-Art has staged numerous shows, multimedia events and interventions in public areas, and cooperated with a number of institutions. Over this 14 years period, the works of 350 artists active in the most varied and advanced areas of contemporary art were presented to the public. Many of them are permanent denizens of the contemporary art scene, and Fri-Art has a well-established reputation in the world of art, at national and international level, for its coherent, open-minded and forward-looking programme. Fri-Art aims to focus on artistic creativity and to promote contemporary investigations within the institution as well as externally.
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Ideally, the objectives Fri-Art sets itself are to follow the evolution of art and its various contemporary trends and to communicate its meaning. Though it may be illusory to aspire to bring artistic investigations at the cutting edge into line with the expectations of the public at large, due to the difference in degrees of initiation, Fri-Art holds fast to its options and objectives.