A snowman is the first sculpture most of us ever make. It reminds us of a time when snow was plentiful. But will future generations still be able to experience this joyous collective ritual? Peter Regli commissions Vietnamese stone sculptors to carve snowmen out of white marble – the material of choice for statue-makers from time immemorial. He then takes the statues from Asia to Switzerland and to countries where it never snows, even installing a whole family of them outside the Flatiron Building in New York. This guardian of the Haus für Kunst Uri in Altdorf, named Gitschen after the nearby mountain, is in no danger of melting.
Since 1996, Regli has been placing sculptures, paintings, images and other artworks – buddhas, garden gnomes, cuckoo clocks and teddy bears – in incongruous contexts all around the world as part of his vast Reality Hacking project. These interventions, like mischievously pop and childlike vernacular totems, are intended to play with our established codes of representation.

Peter Regli (b. 1959, Andermatt, Uri Canton) trained at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He has made a name for himself as a hacker through a series of interventions (400 to date) in art venues, and through installations – anonymous and temporary – in public spaces. He lives and works in New York. In 2004, he was awarded the Meret Oppenheim Art Prize by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture.

Exhibition view Haus für Kunst Uri, Peter Regli, Gitschen 1944/2008, Reality Hacking No. 256, photo: F.X Brun