This collaborative project, designed by Isabell Gatzen & Kyle Solá, takes for its inspiration the iconic and unmistakable Swiss Emmentaler Cheese. Cheese is fundamentally appreciated as sustenance, although it represents labor, tradition and industry for Swiss farmers and producers, while the word “cheese” is colloquially understood as currency. These layers of meaning find their parallel in the cheese’s translation into a sculptural and permanent object, cast in brass.
Der goldene Käse, Le fromage en or, Il formaggio d’oro, Il chaschöl d’or, or The golden cheese – as the work is named in each of the official Swiss languages – represents a dichotomy. The work was produced by Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, whose craft and quality exemplifies these Swiss ideals. The material can be easily mistaken for gold, but handling or closely inspecting the work corrupts this illusion. The significance of the deceptive appearance of the brass is brought to bear on the implicit metaphor of Der goldene Käse; a malleable, oft-consumed, and ubiquitous block of cheese, now in monumental form, offers a tongue-in-cheek critique of the myth of Switzerland as utopia. As a work of art, intimate experience of the piece is prohibited and ownership is inaccessible to most, a complication that brilliantly challenges the stereotype of Swiss perfection with sophistication and biting humor.
Text: Eva Jensen
Photos: OKRO Gallery
Design Year: 2020
Material: Brass
Size: 7.5 x 12 x 2.5 cm
Manufacturer: Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen
Edition: AP 1/1
For the exhibition „Inspired by Switzerland“, 12 Swiss designers were asked to develop projects explicitly inspired by local reference objects. But what is typically Swiss? And is today’s multicultural and globalized Swiss Confederation itself still Swiss?
The 12 projects and the corresponding sources of inspiration show how differently broad and versatile creative design processes can be applied. Visitors are invited to get inspired by the creative potential of their own design culture.
Curated by: Gabriela Chicherio