Congratulations to our dear friend and colleague Uwe Wittwer for landing a spot on the top 50 "most important Swiss artists" list published in today's Bilanz magazine.
Uwe Wittwer is represented by Haunch of Venison Zurich, Cohan and Leslie New York and Nolan Judin Berlin.
Uwe Wittwer: «Shepherds after Poussin», 2007, Watercolour, 179.5 x 304.5 cm
April 4 - May 3, 2008
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 6pm
www.cohanandleslie.com
138 Tenth Avenue
New York, New York 10011
«... the US debut exhibition of Swiss artist Uwe Wittwer, including large scale watercolors, paintings and unique inkjet prints.
While the works are figurative, Wittwer is more accurately a painter of images. His source material is chosen from the overwhelming sea of digital representations - images of images - found on the internet. Wittwer’s dominant interests are old master paintings and vernacular photographs of families and soldiers.
The show is centered on two massive watercolors based on 17th Century paintings by Nicolas Poussin. Their size and strength upend the typical prejudice towards watercolors as small and delicate. Across the gallery a group of 5 medium sized watercolors are based on photographs from family albums dating from the 1940s-60s, which suggest subtle narratives when seen as a whole.
The back gallery will feature large scale, black and white inkjet prints based on photographs by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Although entirely digital from beginning to end they are undeniably painterly, and rely on formal conventions similar to those of the watercolors. Usually rendered in negative, the watercolors and inkjet prints share a sinister sense of confronting memories or a history that may be difficult to face.
Wittwer denies the conventional hierarchy of media in favor of his engagement with images. Similarly, through the filter of the internet a painting by Poussin enjoys no hierarchy over an anonymous snapshot. The compositions found in a soldier’s photograph are as valid as the classical structure of the Old Masters. Both are representations of history with blurred, and possibly irrelevant, distinctions between ‘reality’ and fabrication.
Uwe Wittwer was born in 1954 and is based in Zurich. His work has recently been the focus of solo exhibitions and publications by Haunch of Venison Zurich, the Ludwigforum Aachen, and the Kunstmuseum Solothurn.»
Uwe Wittwer's new large scale watercolour paintings and new oil paintings are on show at the Zurich Gallery of Haunch of Venison. The show comprises new work created over the period of one year, - to a large extent at the Landys & Gyr Studio in East London, where he spent six month on a scholarship.
The precise show is a grand display of Wittwer's masterful painting skills. It offers a rare overview of the sometimes eerie depth of the subject matter behind the often dazzling beauty of his art. Wittwer's habit of displaying a fascist interior alongside a seemingly innocent Still Life, opens a previously hidden, malevolent side to the splendour of the opulent flower painting. Everything is beautiful, nothing is innocent. This is Wittwer's best show to date, - it clearly benefits from the generous space the Haunch of Venison Gallery offers, giving the large scale paintings the space they demand.
The show is accompanied by a book called «Uwe Wittwer, Hail and Snow, watercolours». With a thorough text on Wittwer's work by Sarah Kent.
Uwe Wittwer at Haunch of Venison Gallery, Lessingstrasse 5, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland,
August 26th - September 29th.
Zurich based, CUE affiliated artist Uwe Wittwer now has his own website online. Uwe Wittwer is a founding member of the CUE society with several videos and books published by the CUE publishing section «Édition Idéal».