Artist Name: David Monnet
Residency Dates: April – June 2025
Born: 1970
Hometown: Lausanne, Switzerland
Lives & Works: Chavannes, Switzerland
URL: davidmonnet.com | Instagram @davidmonnet_
Education:
2021 – MFA in Visual Arts, ECAL, Lausanne University of Art and Design
1997 – Bachelor in Visual Arts, HEAD, Geneva University of Art and Design
Bio/Statement:
David Monnet is a Swiss visual artist primarily focusing on painting and sculpture. Through his “meta” approach to painting, he seeks to deploy a composition that reflects on and questions the creative process itself. His works are part of an introspective dynamic in which the canvas becomes the stage for self-reference, positing painting as the subject and medium of its own interrogation. The device he uses integrates a diversity of pictorial codes – fusing hard-edged abstract forms conceived with digital vector tools with realistic figures of banal, decontextualized objects – all rendered in acrylic on canvas by becoming at once “empty shells” and essential to the composition.
Since 2006, David has been a drawing teacher and coordinator of the Foundation Year at ECAL (Lausanne University of Art and Design). His recent solo exhibitions include La Vitrine at Bureau 141 in Lausanne (2024), Locus Solus in Prilly (2023), and Diagrammes at Davel 14, Cully (2022). His work has also been featured in numerous group shows, such as Etats des lieux at Maison Gaudard in Lausanne (2022) and General Audition at galerie l’ELAC in Renens (2017). David has received several recognitions, including the Gustave Buchet Award (shortlisted, 2021) and the Swiss Art Awards (shortlisted, 1998). His work is part of prestigious collections, including Lausanne City Collection (2023), Canton Vaud Bank (BCV) Collection, Lausanne, 2022, the Musée cantonal des beaux-arts (MCBA), Lausanne (2020), and the Municipal Art Fund (FMAC), Geneva (2009).
Support: David Monnet’s residency is made possible with support from AVV, ARTS VISUELS VAUD and SERAC, Service des affaires culturelles du Canton de Vaud.
