At the beginning of the project,” explains Giger in his Zurich studio, “I was fascinated with concrete, because I felt that an antique building such as this needed stone, aged stone, so I used a mixture of cement and fiberglass to achieve a rock gray color for most of the interior elements. But it didn’t work when we tried to use it for the ceiling because the cast arches weighed too much.”

The cast concrete surfaces of the Museum Bar furnishings have been polished to the point that they are skin soft to the touch. It enhances the impression of being inside a once living creature, of sitting on something, perhaps, less than alive, but very warm and enveloping just the same.

Giger’s art consistently provokes a strange perturbing feeling because he continuously touches on profound issues that resonate in all of us and, in many instances, seems to anticipate our future not only as individuals but also as a species. His intellectual concerns on this level are matched only by the impact of his highly original works, his constant experimentation with different media, and an ever more polished execution.

From the start of his artistic career, Giger has confronted the traditional ambivalence of man towards the scientific advances that can alter the nature of the human body. This issue has now acquired a real urgency and prompted a moral and philosophical debate by recent experiments in genetic engineering, such as the possibility of cloning human beings. The detailed depiction of his “Biomechanoid” beings in his classic, translucent airbrush works originated in the late 1960’s, but in his latest sculptures and installations they have acquired a new and eerie physical form.

Etienne Chatton, founder of the International Center of Fantastic Art of Gruyeres, considers Giger the most important artist alive today for his premonitory works. “He is the only artist who has seen the dangerous allure of genetically modified beings, and has linked it to our underlying fears’, says Chatton. “Giger’s Biomechanoids were conceived well before today’s scientific advances.”

Another recurring theme in Giger’s oeuvre is his concern with overpopulation, a threat to overcome, in order to insure the survival of mankind. His now classic painting “Birth Machine” (1967) depicts the cutaway of a pistol in which the bullets are crouching mechanical-looking babies. Giger has recently recreated “Birth Machine” as a two-meter metal sculpture that greets visitors at the entrance of the Giger Museum. Another “Birth