Hans Jörg Bachmann
Daniel Cárdenas
Ma Martin
Marc Zaugg

Hans Jörg Bachmann, born in Arbon in 1949, lives and works in Biel/Bienne. After qualifying as a secondary school teacher in St. Gallen, he studied painting and art education at the Berlin University of the Arts and subsequently undertook further training in photography at F+F Zurich. In 1985, he co-founded the Kunsthalle St. Gallen, which he chaired until 1992; he was also one of the founders of the Foto Forum St. Gallen and served on the board of visarte Biel/Bienne. His work combines black-and-white photography with ink drawings and painting. His work is shaped by his studio-residences in Genoa and Rodalquilar (Andalusia), as well as repeated working stays in Kyoto. His works can be found, amongst others, in the Art Collection of the Canton of St. Gallen, the Tiébeau-Frey Foundation in Bellmund, Bern, the National Library in Bern, Switzerland, Mobiliar Bern and the WANG Art Museum, Kyoto.

‘The Borrowed Landscape’ The title is a term from Chinese and Japanese landscape aesthetics. It applies to painting, poetry, music and garden architecture. In Japanese gardens of the 17th and 18th centuries, we find masterpieces of staged ideal landscapes that invite visitors to linger and meditate. The most famous of all Zen gardens is arguably the Ryoan-ji in Kyoto: ‘The Temple of the Serene Dragon’ During my stays in Japan, I tried to immerse myself in the atmosphere of this mystery. The black-and-white photographs were taken in various gardens in the greater Kyoto area. Modern-day Japan has devoted itself entirely to the digital image. The tradition of copying to achieve absolute perfection has been preserved to this day. However, the techniques have changed radically. The colour series ‘Forests or Gods’ was created at the digital art museum ‘Espon teamLap Borderless’ in Tokyo – ‘Borrowed Landscapes’ in large-scale, walk-through landscapes. A series entitled ‘Peaks of the Floating Clouds’ consists of ink wash paintings on Japanese rice paper.

Daniel is a Colombian photographer and filmmaker driven by a deep curiosity to discover new ways of perceiving reality. His practice focuses on documenting diverse cultures within their natural environments, exploring the profound relationship between people, place, and landscape. For Daniel, the natural world is his greatest source of inspiration. Through photography and film, he seeks to cultivate a deeper awareness of the Earth's singular beauty and intrinsic value—our shared home and the living source that sustains us. His work invites viewers to reconnect with nature, recognizing it not merely as a backdrop to human life, but as an essential presence worthy of respect, care, and reciprocity.

Gratitude, in this exhibition, is understood not as an emotion, but as a practice of perception—a way of reimagining our relationship with the living world. This body of work emerges from eight years of sustained dialogue with the Kogi, the Indigenous guardians of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Rather than documenting a culture, these photographs reflect a process of transformation shaped by an encounter with a worldview in which humanity and nature are not separate entities, but expressions of the same living consciousness. The images invite viewers to consider the landscape not merely as scenery, but as a living presence; the territory not as a resource, but as memory, intelligence, and relationship. Through this perspective, photography becomes less an act of observation than a gesture of listening—a means of revealing the subtle connections that bind human life to the rhythms of the Earth. The exhibition extends beyond the photographic medium through a ceremonial cacao gathering inspired by ancestral traditions of reciprocity and gratitude. Conceived as a shared experience rather than a performance, it offers a space for reflection on how ritual can continue to evolve as a contemporary practice of reconnecting with ourselves, with one another, and with the natural world. Ultimately, this exhibition proposes gratitude as a radical act of awareness. By recognizing the Earth not simply as the place we inhabit, but as the living system that makes all life possible, it invites us to imagine new forms of coexistence rooted in reciprocity, presence, and care.

MA Martin works across art, architecture and ceramics, running her practice under the name MA.Martin_Studio. Printmaking and ceramics form two recurring strands of her work, alongside sound-based and project-based formats. A source connected to the print exchange project «Escambo Gráfico 2.0» describes her as a Brazilian artist based in Switzerland. She is a regular presence in the art scene of Biel/Bienne, including a group show at étage 19 in Nidau in 2023 and «Joli Mois de Mai» in Biel/Bienne in 2025.

MA Martin was already a guest at étage 19 in 2023. For «Natura – als Idee» it is her engagement with material that counts: ceramics and printmaking are processes in which earth, pigment, fire and time actively take part and help determine the outcome — nature not as a motif, but as a collaborator in the making.

Marc Zaugg is a print artist who specialises in depictions of images found in nature. His works are based on his own photographs, which are first processed digitally and then finished by hand. The result is a series of works that appear both highly naturalistic and graphically rendered.

Marc Zaugg is exhibiting prints at étage 19 2026. The subjects of the works mostly revolve around natural phenomena, which Zaugg captures with his camera, processes digitally and prints in small editions of 4–6 copies on Japanese paper using analogue techniques.