1969
Dave is born on July 24th as the youngest of four children. His childhood and youth are spent mainly in the area around Laufen near Basel, Switzerland.
1985
After completing his basic education, Dave enters the profession of stone sculpting.
1997
Dave sustains a head injury during an accident that requires him to undergo an operation, after which something has changed in him. While coming out from anaesthesia he forms a plan to create a work of art honouring the upcoming 1998 FIFA world cup in France, and to have it signed by all players of both final teams just before the final game. How exactly this unlikely plan is supposed to be put into practice remains unclear, but Dave is deeply convinced of his idea. The two-month recuperation period following the operation gives him enough time to work on his painting, which he dubs
“Le rêve du football”.
1998
After having presented his painting to several FIFA directors and having received green light for his undertaking, Dave leaves for France in the summer of 1998. To general surprise, he is successful and returns with his artwork signed.
1999
Encouraged by the success of his project and the positive feedback he receives for his work, Dave begins seriously considering an artistic career. He refrains from making an immediate decision, however, since he is unsure if he could consistently live up to his own high expectations concerning art. He decides to start looking for a completely new mode of artistic expression.
Consequently, Dave begins an intense process of familiarising himself with art and its history. About a year into his search, he finds what he has been looking for: While viewing Picasso's “Les demoiselles d'Avignon”, he is inspired by his experience as a stone sculptor to transfer the basics of cubism into three-dimensional space – and thus discovers fusionism. The
first fusionist artwork is completed in the final days of the year, just in time for the new calendar millenium.
2000
First financial successes allow Dave to give up his job as a stone sculptor and become a full-time artist.
During this time, he starts experimenting heavily with the application of existing art styles to fusionist reliefs.
2001
Dave decides to create a work of art for the FIFA world cup of 2002 – this time using the techniques of fusionism. The creative process, originally planned to take three months, turns into a twenty-month battle: The artwork is so complex that every new brushstroke applied to it seems to distort at least one of its many images from at least one perspective. In the end, however, he successfully completes the piece, which receives the title “The Magic of Football”.
2002
As planned, "The magic of football" is signed at the world cup in Japan.
“Love and Hatred”, an artwork about the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001, is completed.
2003
The creation of the 2002 world cup artwork is followed by a period of intense artistic development, during which Dave continues looking for new forms, both in technique and content. His attitude towards the art scene of today grows increasingly critical. He begins to view it as too outdated and inflexible to renew itself to any significant degree – a degenerated construct with lots of mass but very little substance. He becomes increasingly convinced that truly good art does not need to hide itself in a glamour costume at expensive vernissages for the high society: Good art would fascinate a construction worker equally as much as a billionaire. Dave has no interest in picking a fight with the art establishment, however – he prefers just to set his own bar higher, to simply do a better job himself.
More and more, Dave begins to manipulate the viewer and his perception, and experiments with a steadily growing selection of new techniques, methods and materials – using amongst others mirrors, typography, photography, film and sound.
With “Tipomo”, the first living fusion – a new form of performance with fusionist images painted directly onto the bodies of the actors – takes place.
2004
“Der Voyeur” and
“Die Knospe” are created, two large sculptures intended for exhibition in the public space.
Furthermore, Dave creates “Iteration”. Walking in a circle around this object, the observer can read a sentence in German on its sides: “Are you sure you're walking in a circle?”
2005
In
“Formensch”, an object/performance which was designed during a stay in Thailand, Dave lets his performers disappear seamlessly inside a massive relief – and thus symbolically also the distinction between the human entity and art.
2006
A third world cup artwork is created this year, bearing the title “The Road to Berlin”. Like the previous two, it is signed by all players of both final teams.
Dave's stay in Berlin leads to an exhibition of his works at the Brandenburger Tor and inspires the multi-part work
“Time Tunnel”, which loosely simulates the experience of walking past the Berlin wall while showing the way to freedom with arrows – to a crack in the wall that is visible on the final image in the series.
Dave begins to receive increasing international attention. The first US exhibition of his works is held in New York.
2007
Dave's work
“Space of Time”, a slowly rotating sphere that, when viewed from a distance, appears to disappear into thin air for a moment with each completed turn, is installed over the main entrance to the Commerzbank tower in Frankfurt. This marks the first time Dave uses the motion of an object in front of the viewer rather than the motion of the viewer in front of the object to create an artistic impression.
Daves “Atelierhaus”, which is both a living space and a "work-in-progress exhibition on demand", opens its doors to the public in Basel.
2008
“
Public Fusion” is performed for the first time, merging architecture, human bodies, live music, choreography and painting into one work of art.
2009
Following an exhibition of his works in Athens, Dave calls the “fusion journey” into life – a journey through the world that also constitutes a search: The search for humanity in the 21st century, for its ideas, dreams and designs for the new age that we may be standing on the brink of – caused amongst others through economic globalisation, the creation of the internet, the end of the cold war and increasing international migration. The search for the answer to the question: What will the world of tomorrow bring?
The first chapter of this journey begins on February 16th in the shape of “DC”, a
performance held in front of the acropolis in Athens. The resulting images and impressions are taken up by the media and subsequently go around the world, appearing in hundreds of media outlets on all continents.
A
second performance (DC II) takes place in May at the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin – again, to a massive media reaction that even trumps that of the first performance. A smaller third performance takes place in June,
with the Art Basel exhibition as its backdrop.
The connecting element of the “DC” performances is a face that seems to sum up this moment of human history in itself – that of Barack Obama, onto whom millions of people worldwide are projecting their hopes and fears about the future.
