«Tutto è connesso» (everything is connected), is the title of Mario Merz’s (1925–2003) impressive igloo, realized by the master of Italian Arte Povera in the foyer of the Kunstmuseum. The artist flashes back to the origins of humanity by referring to the archaic form of an igloo. In his endeavor to connect primordial history with the present, he makes use of novel materials, mainly, neon light. The series of numerals lighting up between the stone slabs– 1 (+) 1 (=) 2 (1+2=) 3 (2+3) 5 (3+5) 8, and so on—are based on the Italian mathematician Fibonacci and hint at a movement that accelerates from an initially slow advance through to the rapid tempo of the present day. The artist, who is represented in the collection with a first-class work group, contrasts the historical splendor of museum architecture with a «poor» materiality, which in its simple presence and archaic nature, thematizes fundamental social as well as existential issues. 

The work of Roman Signer from eastern Switzerland is also fundamentally influenced by the process-oriented art of the late 1960s. The sculptor expands classical sculpture by adding the dimension of time, or rather, by making processes visible. His oeuvre is well documented in the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, beginning from early works, such as Warschauer Projekt (1971), which is only available in the form of sketches and model photos, through to the well-known Aktion mit einer Zündschnur (1989), which enriches the collection as an extensive object.  From September 11 to October 15, 1989, the artist had a fuse burn along the train track from the town where he was born, Appenzell, to his present home, St.Gallen. Not only were space and time covered by the work, but it can also be understood as cutting a path, in a concrete as well as metaphoric sense—embedded in a landscape that the beholder only conceptually deduces. By consistently following his artistic approach, transitory works arise that generally remain preserved only in videos, or in previously meticulously planned photo series documenting all work phases. This is shown exemplarily in Schwarzes Tuch (1994), Fahrrad mit Raketen (1995), and Kleine Ereignisse Hotel Castell, Zuoz (1996).

Active in the environment of an expanded concept of sculpture are also artists such as Erwin Wurm (*1954), Christoph Rütimann (*1955), Matthew McCaslin (*1957), Karin Sander (*1957), Sylvie Fleury (*1961), Christoph Büchel (*1966), Koenraad Dedobbeleer (*1975), and Nadim Vardag (*1980), who are represented in the collection with, in part, considerable work groups.  

The trained musician Nam June Paik, who emerged in the 1960s in Germany in the environment of the Fluxus movement and the Düsseldorf scene around Joseph Beuys, is generally considered the grandfather of video art. Thanks to a generous gift from Heinrich E. Schmid, the St. Gallen collection is able to make one of Paik’s important installations available to the public on a permanent basis. Beuys-Voice – A Hole in the Hat, which was created in 1987 for the documenta 8, is an artistic homage to his companion Joseph Beuys who had died the year before. Shown in staccato-like cuts are short successions of images from a shared performance, individual signs of the artist, such as the burning hat, cut against computer-generated sequences, which would prove exemplary, not only for the development of video art, but  also for the subsequent MTV and music video generation.

St. Gallen artist Pipilotti Rist, whose oeuvre is meanwhile celebrated throughout the world, is among the younger generation of video artists. Her first museum exhibition was held at the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, and the collection also houses numerous works by the artist. Early single-channel video works, as well as expansive installations. T.V.-Lüster (1993), permanently installed in the museum foyer, is a loan from the Swiss federal state. The unique video object comprises six monitors on which the artist’s eyes circle to the beat of a polka. The sophisticatedly arranged work combines two basic themes of video art—the surveillance camera, and the picture screen as a magical lamp—and in doing so, playfully exudes a feeling of happiness that will definitely stay with the visitor on their tour through the museum.  

In 2012 it was possible to acquire a further key work from the artist’s oeuvre thanks to special means from the City and Canton of St. Gallen, as well as generous support from the Raiffeisen Jubiläumsstiftung and the Stiftung Ars Rhenia.  As a spectacularly staged installation in the Oberlichtsaal, Administrating Eternity (2011) forms the climax of the retrospective exhibition of blood-driven cameras and overflowing spaces by Pipilotti Rist, which took place at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in 2012. In this masterpiece, central elements of her video work come together: the extensive staging is just as characteristic of her unmistakable artistic language as are dizzying camera spans and somersaulting images, which with technical distancing and associative montage flow into an infectious, colorful flow of images. The artist cleverly examines the supposed truth-content of the electronic medium and creates sensual pictorial spaces, within which visitors submerge to experience an amazing feeling of happiness. Rist expands the direct statement of earlier works in terms of content through the dream-like moment in Administrating Eternity. As the title indicates, administrating eternity seems to be a primordial human craving. The artist refers to the precarious state between waking and sleeping, which resonates in the accompanying sound.

Among the most recent generation of video artists is Candice Breitz (*1972) from South Africa, who has found major international recognition with exhibitions in recent years and is now represented in the St. Gallen collection with two impressive works, Becoming Julia, 2003, and Me Myself I, 2001. The latter is the title of a popular hit by American songwriter Joan Armatrading from the 1980s. The artist translates this in a video that combines a type of road movie with what is practically a private, insider view, while Becoming Julia deconstructs the role model permanently produced by the dream factory of Hollywood, and insistently poses the question of the construction of identity in today’s media age.

Wild Seeds is the title of an impressive video installation realized for the first time by Yael Bartana, born in 1970, at the Istanbul Biennale in 2005. In her oeuvre, the Israeli artist confronts us with mediatized experiences of reality. She has been occupied repeatedly with the militarization of everyday Israeli life, and the self-evidence of the Jewish state, and found images for them that have a deeply unsettling inherent quality, such as in the supposed children’s games in Wild Seeds.