Sexauer proudly presents

Nik Emch: Lost West (53 min)- screening with aftershow drinks

It was in early 2020, shortly after the outbreak of a mysterious lung disease in China, when Swiss artist and musician Nik Emch traveled from Munich to Nashville, ostensibly to bring queer country singer Mary Gauthier a can of Italian olive oil. But what the artist was truly in search of was an acoustic guitar from the 1950s for his project Lost West. This project would juxtapose – in hundreds of photographs – the architecture of Las Vegas with the ancient mesas of Monument Valley. The soundtrack would be provided by two guitars: a J-45 acoustic from Nashville, and Emch’s old companion, a Gibson SG. Music for a big screen.
 
Emch has been obsessed with the culture and the cultural darkness of the United States since childhood. He began this trip staying in a rented room in the Trump Hotel in Vegas. From there he would roam the streets with his camera, trying to capture the city’s loneliness, its colors, and the icy heat of its reflective facades. Potency without depth, the triumph of the banal, the beauty of geometry …
 
A week after leaving Las Vegas Emch arrived in Nashville to pass along the olive oil, and search for the J-45. The instrument is eventually found with the help of guitarist Forrest O’Conner. Emch then travels westward again. This time he is headed for Monument Valley. The iconic forms were shaped over millions of years by erosion and weathering. The famous mountains are the background of John Ford’s cinematic myths, the Wild West, the American Dream, colonial lies, and the iconography of European settlement. Emch shoots thousands of pictures.
 
After three weeks in the States Emch returns to Europe bringing countless pictures back from the lost West. While the artist was abroad Covid had arrived in Zurich. During lockdown Emch mounted some 700 photographs before and behind each other. They were chosen from thousands of motifs. The artist juxtaposed modern and postmodern architecture against the layering of nature. The colorful steel and glass facades are set against reddish shimmering rock. To accompany the images Emch uses both guitars to create space and atmosphere. The Nashville J-45 from 1951, and his 50 year old Gibson SG – a veteran instrument from West Berlins punk era.
 
Some things – like Emch’s guitars – gain beauty and dignity with age: people, ideas, the mesas of the American West. While other things lose dignity: most manmade things, and even dreams. Lost West. 
 
NIK EMCH  
Nick Emch (1967) is a Swiss guitarist, visual artist and performance musician. Friends with Francoise Cactus, he played punk concerts in clubs and squats in West Berlin and Zurich in the 1980s and recorded albums with various artists. His sound works and punk performances were shown in galleries and museums (Kunsthaus Zürich, Haus Konstruktiv, Schirn Kunsthalle). Vivienne Westwood presented her autumn collection to his sounds in 2003 (collaboration with Marky Edelmann). Emch has worked with numerous artists such as Richard Dorfmeister and Martin Ain. Today he lives and works in Zurich, but Berlin is his second home.