Markus Raetz
Opening: Thursday 14 March 2013 at 6.30 pm
Exhibition: 14 March – 11 May 2013
We are delighted to announce a solo exhibition by Markus Raetz presenting recent sculptures, mobiles and engravings.
For more than 30 years Markus Raetz has reflected about the language of art as a form of visual communication by means of poetic and essential images. The mechanisms of representation on one hand, and the plurality of vision on the other, are the themes around which his artistic experience has evolved. In his sketch-books from the ‘60s and ‘70s, the artist sets out the foundations of his vision: the delicate, precise lines of the drawings form figures, landscapes and objects whose continual transformation makes us take part in the creative process and makes us conscious of the fluidity of images and points of view.
Over the years, the ideas and the themes contained in the drawings are turned into works and become installations, sculptures, and monumental works. Often made from natural, unusual or ephemeral materials, they preserve the lightness of the drawing and an awareness of being images and thus representation, game, thought. Examples of this are the eucalyptus leaves forming faces on a wall (1982), the twigs which, if viewed from a certain point in space, form the body of Eve (1983), and the granite marker stones scattered across a field that form a face when seen from a certain hill (1984).
Since the start of the 1990s Raetz has been working on a new cycle of sculptures, the Anamorphosis: iron or bronze fusions which have a different appearance according to the viewpoint from which we look at them. The movement of the viewer around the work enables to locate the point of view from which an apparently shapeless mass suddenly becomes a familiar object, such as a pipe, or the figure of Mickey Mouse, or even reveals different images: for example an upright head turns upside-down when viewd from a diffrent angle. In other cases the sculpture itself moves and transforms itself in front of our eyes.
Markus Raetz some times uses mirrors in his sculptures in order to show different views simultaneously, as for instance in the recent work ME WE: in the reflection the word ME becomes WE. The new sculpture Ring is a tribute to the Endless ribbon (1935), a sculpture by Max Bill inspired by the Moebius’ ribbon, which has been a recurring figure in the artist’s sketchbooks since the very beginning. The change from the second to the third dimension has been carried out. The Ring is represented in two different ways: as black patinated cast brass sculpture and in an aquatinta etching.
Markus Raetz lives and works in Bern. Since 1966 he has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums. Solo shows have been staged by Kunsthaus in Zürich (1975), Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum (1979), the New Museum in New York (1988), the Serpentine Gallery in London (1993), the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (2006) and most recently at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and MAMCO in Genève in 2011. A large retrospective of his drawings has been presented at Kunstmuseum Basel from November 2012 to February 2013.
He represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1988 and took part to Documenta in Kassel in 1968, 1972 and 1982. His works are in the collections of MoMA in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt aswell as in the leading museums in Switzerland.