HR Giger

Hans Ruedi Giger was a Swiss surrealist artist whose work had a lasting effect on the popular imagination of the latter half of the twentieth century. In cultural history, Giger is particularly known as the creator of the monster in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film ‘Alien’. However, his dystopian vision has influenced pop culture far beyond that: Through surreal sculptures, drawings and paintings, he created a dark, psychedelic-looking world of figures that oscillates between dream/reality, life/death, man/machine. Today, the themes or genres that Giger dealt with over several decades are more topical than ever among artists: in a world dedicated to progress and therefore machine development, an examination of existentialism is almost inevitable – the utopia of underworlds, human/physical decay and the sovereignty of machines, can be perfectly located in Giger’s fantastic realism.