Adrian Schiess

September 13 – November 8 2020

It was in 1984 when Adrian Schiess (b.1959, lives and works in Zurich and Le Locle) had his first solo show at Kunsthalle Winterthur. He then placed several objects, individually painted pieces of wood or cardboard on the floor and aligned them into the direction of the natural light sources: In the main hall coming from the top, in the small hall from the side. This early installation pointed the way ahead of his artistic development: Primarily regarding the image carrier - or to be more precise the colour carrier, that against painting tradition was neither canvas nor wood and not hanging vertically on the walls, but laying vertically on the floor. As important as that was the absolute primacy of colour: it should be without representative or narrative function and it should be free from any artistic will or genius gesture.
It is 36 years later now and Adrian Schiess returns with a selection of his so-called Fetzen, painted customary scraps of masking paper originating from 1980 to 1999. His interest in the rather poor material derives from its cheap price but also in the artist’s rejection of a traditional image carrier such as canvas. Paper comes with certain degrees of freedom: It is not too precious for failure and at the same time very easy to modify by cutting or tearing up. Adrian Schiess started with big pieces of paper but then painted them over and ripped them up until he would attest them artistic autonomy – be it as individual pieces, be it as parts of accumulations presented on tables. With the side effect, that only a few of the formerly large formats survived.
At the Kunsthalle Wintethur, Adrian Schiess arranges the majority of the remaining large papers into a site-specific wall installation. This is a premiere, and by its experimental character open-ended. The intended scenario is of course that the individual colour tones add up to an harmonic sound; quite similar to the accumulations on the tables but in an obviously larger scale. For those who want to see more work by Adrian Schiess, we recommend the substantial solo show at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, on display until February 2021.