Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts 2012 Brigitte Ulmer Galerie Ueker&Ueker September 2005 Aurel Schmidt Galerie Ueker&Ueker September 2005 Gabriel Brönnimann «Portal Kunstgeschichte» March 2004 Karin Ego-Gaal «Basler Zeitung» 12th February 2004 Marion Benz Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts 2012 Brigitte Ulmer Revenants with Toggle Switches The virtual objects of Daniel Lahaii By Brigitte Ulmer Reminiscent of a UFO, the device is square at the base and tapers gently upwards to a transparent dome that sits proudly atop the housing. It's not hard to imagine hot vapor exiting through the slit and grille on the sides. The cream color of the housing is the only unequivocal indication of origins in the 1940s and 1950s. The device is indubitably handsome, with a shiny, strokable skin, and its three metal switches are a blatant invitation to find out what happens if you flick them. Click, click, click. Will it come to life with a roar, or merely a gentle whirr or slight shake? Will it, in due course, take off? Daniel Lahaii's other devices are equally enigmatic. One has curious red rubber protrusions on a top-mounted column with a spiraling rubber tube and a black knob that might discharge liquid if you were to turn it. Another has a laterally-mounted handle and a dome resembling compressed sausage meat; another has nine uniformly positioned brown pipes sprouting from the top. Where do these things come from, what sound do they make, and above all, what do they do? Their creator Daniel Lahaii is an inventor and designer of impossible objects and devices. He is a trained welder and performs the work of a technical draftsman, applying his expertise in materials to inventing and building machines, with great attention to detail and motivated by his highly creative disposition—yet it's all done on a 3-D program on a computer. These machines never existed, and will never exist. Working on computer, Lahaii as it were extends the life of analog, operational devices before capturing them in large format on photographic paper. The result is a new aesthetic of virtuality that was impossible until a few years ago. Lahaii's machines are fantasy machines. His work oscillates back and forth between photography and digital sculpture and reflects a specific mindset, invoking an era when product manufacturers boasted of product durability rather than churning out an optimized version every year. It was an age of new plastics such as melamine, which was prized for its resilience and was used to conceal electrical devices' inner lives behind burnished surfaces, bringing new luster to the domestic scene. Thanks to Lahaii, that epoch lives on in virtual form. He is constantly coming up with new machines, which undergo an ongoing development process, with new shapes and ostensible functions, and knobs and switches recalling the prehistory of the touchscreen, when manual operation produced a clearly audible click. These machines simulate a certain busy utility, their cream-colored housings reminiscent not only of the 1940s but also of lost values, particularly constancy. Using digital methods, Lahaii has extended the life of the analog age. In our consumer society, it is unsurprising that emotions and attitudes accumulate around products, and Lahaii doesn't hesitate to exploit that. His virtual images are markers of dependability, strength and manageability, or the loss thereof. His devices are evocative of a time when the tangible and the analog were synonymous with reliability. By simulating something which no longer exists, his works create space for longing. The irony is that in Lahaii's oeuvre, the mechanical-analog and the digital spur each other on via mutual osmosis. With digital technology, the lives of technical and mechanical devices can be manipulated as desired, new applications devised, new combinations created. The viewer may be familiar with individual components, but in this parallel universe they assume outlandish forms. Lahaii is a frequenter of flea markets and owns hundreds of cream-colored devices, everyday objects with melamine housings, as well as technical brochures. Well versed in their technical details, he reassembles modules in new ways according to undisclosed design plans and his own personal logic, thus creating an archive. However, we are not talking about an actual warehouse full of machinery. We are on the slippery postmodern terrain of virtual image production, an ambiguous zone where reality becomes fiction. Images, while ostensibly referring to a purported reality, have become divorced from it, in the realm of simulacra. According to French sociologist Jean Baudrillard's definition, a simulacrum is a simulation where the original image has gone missing: the image now only refers to itself, caught in an endless loop. Because such images give the outward impression of referring to something real, they destabilize the viewer's perceptions. Upon close inspection, Lahaii's images turn out to be mathematical structures created on a computer, hyperreal to the point of unreality. Unlike German artist Thomas Demand—who builds simulated versions of his virtual interiors in cardboard before creating an image—Lahaii doesn't at any point create his components in three dimensions. His work is all done virtually. He throws out barbs to lure the viewer along deceptive paths: real toggle switches, outlets for hot vapor, rubber protrusions. And of course all those cream-colored surfaces, burned into the retinas of a whole generation, making it even harder to unmask as "fake" what is apparently recognizable and cosily familiar. Deceivingly genuine "photographic" techniques are employed to mislead the viewer: shadow and reflected light are elaborately stage managed, suggesting a photographic assignment for a company catalog. These illusory images use their outward appearances to conceal their duplicity. It's a strategy that touches on the old relationship between the real and the copied—the binary system embedded in art's DNA. Since Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which ponders on reality and portrayal, the relationship between the former and the latter has been repeatedly renegotiated. Simulacra, however, undermine the old hierarchy between the real and the copied. They elevate the image to the status of something independent, eliminating the distinction between the original and the copy. Lahaii is a cunning producer of images: like a bricoleur, he appropriates, deconstructs and reassembles individual parts to create the new and the unfamiliar. His simulated machines are like revenants from a lost age, brought back to life using 3-D and graphics software. It is one of the ironies of Lahaii's art that the mechanical era lives on through algorithms.   Translated by Dr. Adrian Feuchtwanger, www.feuchtwanger.com Top of page Galerie Ueker&Ueker September 2005 Aurel Schmidt Between Analog and Digital Reality By Aurel Schmidt Computers have fundamentally changed our lives and the way people think, and continue to do so. All manner of innovative, technical possibilities lie ahead. The threshold between what is real and what is potentially real have long since become absurd, for example in microphysics, and recent developments go well beyond what we have encountered so far. It has become possible to simulate reality, and the boundaries between analog reality and generated virtual reality have disappeared. We are entering a playful age, as is abundantly evident from advertising and videos. It is also an age in which precise criteria for thinking and making distinctions have disappeared. "La realité dépasse la fiction," reality surpasses anything humans can dream up themselves. The situation has become even trickier than that: fiction, or virtuality so to speak, is interfering with reality. In the world of art, the question is: to what extent are new technologies such as digital exerting influence on artistic creation. Much more progress seems to have been made in film and music than for example in the visual, plastic arts, and it is not immediately clear why. Nonetheless, some artists are determined to exploit these new possibilities and forge ahead into new artistic terrain. One such artist is Daniel Lahaii, upon whom we focus here. Lahaii's work is best seen as situated between object art and photography. From the outset, Lahaii always referenced tangible reality. His bandages for wounds, painted using fish (material from the bodies of dead fish) as part of a ritual act, invoked the objectively real world. Around that time Lahaii also began collecting objects, usually household devices, found in second-hand stores or at flea markets. They only had to fulfill one requirement: they had to be cream-colored. The term 'collecting' is not quite right in this context. He was actually accumulating or amassing objects with unusual aesthetic charm which then acquired new meaning through serialization. Precisely what meaning is hard to say. Perhaps we are dealing with a situation where, as French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc, Count Buffon  (1707-1788) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe essentially stated, every insight derives from perception and thus from the object in question, and with things-in-themselves (Immanuel Kant's "Das Ding an sich") that represent nothing and depend wholly on the subject doing the perceiving. Household devices without an aura, in this case. Banality as such, but with added meaning. Lahaii continued to accumulate objects in sufficient numbers for an exhibition; at the same time computer technology was developing pari passu. It then seemed a small step, though in actuality an enormous one, to create such objects artificially. In other words, on a screen. Today we refer to this as 'virtual creation.' This marked the beginning of a new creative phase for Lahaii. Lahaii says he would like to have become an equipment designer. In fact he did, but in an unexpected fashion. For a while he created objects out of papier maché, for example an extraordinarily "real" boiler; he also stretched articles of clothing across canvas frames, spreading beeswax on them to create artistic objects reminiscent of paintings, though not in the traditional manner. He also painted portraits onto everyday objects such as electric heating pads. Eventually he found he had exhausted the options for expression. Computer technology and photography provided him with a timely way out. Using a 3-D program, he began to design and shape objects on the computer screen: products of the imagination, not taken from the real world, but nonetheless resembling ordinary items of practical use, e.g. household items, accompanying the accumulation of cream-colored objects in an almost surreal way. Using various software applications, he was able to conceive and construct shapes and looks. In fact he was inventing, since the key point is that he was playing with the limitless possibilities of digital design. The second step was to render the created, generated objects as chromogenic color prints and mount them behind air-tight acrylic glass via the Diasec process. At first glance, these photographs, in formats of up to 210 x 170 cm, appear hyperrealist, the only difference being that they are not based on real items. They also possess an overwhelming presence. The photorealist style only reveals itself as fake upon closer inspection, when it becomes evident that the objects in the photographs involve mathematical structures. They appear to have been painted, but have not. This accumulation of cream-colored devices is a wonderful little chamber of miracles in a digital age, on the threshold between the real, genuine and analog on the one hand, and the virtual and generated on the other; and on the boundary between what physically exists and what is potentially possible. All because the technology makes it possible. Daniel Lahaii is thus keeping his options well and truly open for further creative output. Top of page Galerie Ueker&Ueker September 2005 Gabriel Brönnimann Below the off-white surface The artist Daniel Lahaii is a gatherer or in other words an accumulator. While the usual intent of collecting is the achievement of completeness or rareness, his collection of objects of times passed only fulfil one condition: to be off-white. The off-white of the 1950s, which is so typical for the whole period. Starting with real installations made of everyday household appliances like balances, lamps, hairdryers, foodprocessors, etc., Daniel Lahaii develops his own world by recreating appliances that do not exist. The artist invents, designs and engineers on his computer gadgets that appear very familiar and yet they are pure fantasy. Beautifully designed with every light reflection they seem perfect to the last detail. Then, a curious process happens to the observer in a second step - the question: “what are these gadgets for? A toaster in form of a mortadella? A juice dispenser made out of plastic and fabric? Medical appliances? Something unpleasant? What is real, what is artificial? However, Daniel Lahaii does not give answers – the questioning is an essential element to his work of art. The answers can only be found individually by contemplating the work of art, hence the reaction is also different from one observer to the other: from amusement to unsettled-ness. This is what Daniel Lahaii intents. He pushes the observer to decide between query and perception, pleasant and unpleasant, real and unreal. The artist intentionally chooses to create a situation where the observer at first sight weens reality, but at the second view artificiality is revealed. Gabriel Brönnimann Top of page «Portal Kunstgeschichte» March 2004 Karin Ego-Gaal Daniel Lahaii  "KONVOLUT" At first glance these works are «only» photos of especially eccentric objects that remind one of kitchen appliances of old, of these plastic cream-coloured household objects. But something is different! Could it be that these objects do not really exist? They do look very similar to the appliances mentioned, they are incredibly beautiful and perfect, almost unreal. Already very close to the secret, we must ask ourselves the question: «What functions do these objects fulfil?» - «None at all, for they are fictitious!» is artist Daniel Lahaii’s reply. The exhibition «Konvolut» at «Galerie Daeppen» focuses on the development and forming of virtual objects. The artist Daniel Lahaii was inspired by an omnium gatherum of real everyday objects which he collected during the last years. Though they are not themselves part of the exhibition, they can be viewed in a show window next door. An ocean of cream-coloured objects which receives much attention from the exhibition and attracts a lot of collectors who would gladly buy one piece or the other – «but they are not for sale», says gallery owner Guillaume Daeppen.     A UFO with feet and orange-coloured hooks; a toaster with tubes instead of a toasting rack; a mixer with a pair of bellows; a huge piece of mortadella with eyes; imagination knows no boundary. These devices with their seeming functions, almost all of them creamy-white, were constructed by Daniel Lahaii using 3D-software and realised as photographic enlargement behind acrylic glass. Most of them measure 80 x 60cm, the biggest measures 124 x 162 cm.     The object’s size plays an important role in observer irritation, because on the one hand, the cream-coloured object on the photo is supposed to appear very real. On the other hand, the artist likes to enable a process in which «the mathematical structure of the virtual material exposes the appliance’s unreality through close and thorough contemplation.» «Konvolut» is an absorbing exhibition – its fascination with being and not being is gripping and keeps one thinking for a long time. Top of page «Basler Zeitung» 12th February 2004 Marion Benz Cream-coloured New works by Daniel Lahaii at the «Galerie Daeppen» «Many people stopped, started discussions and had a laugh. Some even asked themselves if this was going to turn into a junk dealer’s shop», Daniel Lahaii recounts. Already the erection of his new installation he calls «Konvolut» attracted so much attention that it was simply great to work on it, he said. Within the time of five days he was heaping up antiquarian objects in the corner room of Guillaume Daeppen’s gallery – objects he had been collecting in over twenty years. Every square inch is covered by one of the ivory-coloured curiosities: Next to an old cash register lie yellowed manuals, hairdryers, alarm clocks, baby comforters, thermos bottles, ashtrays and a baby scale. Floor lamps cast a strange light on everything. All objects are from the 1950s. Nevertheless, their design had not been the reason for collecting them, according to the artist from Basel. «It’s their colour I’m interested in», he stresses again and again. For him, the cream-coloured household objects are «a part of Swiss history.» «I used to walk through the flea market every Saturday. I never went home without one or two scales,» says the artist. It all started with these scales. Today, his collection serves him as a «catalyst». Using 3D-software at his computer, he generates monstrous juice-draining machines, liquidizers or other odd objects – their function is entirely left to imagination. The electrical appliances seem perfectly constructed up to the mirror effects on their chrome parts and the transparency of their glass elements. It takes the PC up to 270 hours to render the objects. At a small scale, they look deceivingly real – like advertisement images from a mail-order catalogue. However, the large scale prints Lahaii is at present showing at «Galerie Daeppen» instantly reveal their artificiality. He deliberately refrains from endowing his constructions with patina - «otherwise I could take pictures of originals», explains the artist from Basel. And he just loves to confront the beholder with seemingly familiar objects while actually creating the totally unexpected, as he had already done with his images of fish at the beginning of the 1990s. It is an intriguing interplay between appearance and reality. Top of page