Beat Zoderer | crisscross & monoliths

About

The internationally renowned artist Beat Zoderer, who appears in countless collections around the world, once said, "I have always put the cart before the horse, always tried to go across the flow. And I believe that I have been successful." As it happens, he has clearly succeeded in doing so until now, and he will continue to do so in 2019.

His latest series "crisscross & monoliths", which is on display in Berlin, is a logical follow-up to his earlier "ZIG-ZAG" works, but is once again an example of how little care Zoderer has for being pigeonholed or classified. His inexhaustible well of creativity brings history - the loaded tradition of the Concrete artists - into his painting, which is radically generated by pragmatism. Although the conceptual aspects of the imagery are based on references to Zurich Concrete artists such as Bill, Graeser and Glarner, Zoderer goes much further by demonstrating a language of his own, a "perspective in depth" via spatial dimensions. He, thus, sidesteps the question of the scale of values of spectral colours, for example, while raising the question of our perceptive and conceptual relationship to conventional structures. Zoderer mostly leaves right angles out of sight, his horizontal and vertical lines, his wedges driven into the top confuse and refresh at the same time, and his watercolour-like painting creates transparency. In this respect, Zoderer is like Beuys: he has never sought to defend his artistic stance doctrinarily whatever the platform and criteria were; in-stead, he remained open to new things, to new paths, to exploring new boundaries, where the theories of the visual arts dissolve and move in the direction of musical scores.

In addition to works from the "crisscross" series, four monoliths are exhibited in Berlin, evolved from his dodecahedrons and pentagrams, which reinterpret the format of the wall sculpture or wall object. The geometric abstract imagery and the desire to perceive graphics, design, architecture, music and art as a single group of activities are tangible to the visitor. A critic once tried to describe this phenomenon as follows: "His creative principle is based on the provocative illogicality of the paradox. "However, anyone who consciously studies the Berlin exhibition will recognise another phenomenon that is typical of Zoderer. His works are characterised by an astonishing optimism.

Philippe Rey

BEAT ZODERER, born 1955 in Zurich, Switzerland.
He lives and works in Wettingen, Switzerland und Genoa, Italy.