Franz Gertsch: Polyfocal Allover

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For the first time in decades, several major works from the artist’s monumental series of ‘situation portraits’ from the 1970s will be reunited, including At Luciano’s House (1973), Luciano I (1976), Luciano II (1976), and Portrait of Urs Luthi (1970). Based on photographs Gertsch took of a group of young friends who had begun living in a commune in Lucerne after 1968, including celebrated artists Luciano Castelli and Urs Luthi, the paintings capture the subjects’ lively presence as social beings in formation, surrounded by a clutter of clothes, makeup and unwashed dinner plates. The extraordinarily rendered details illuminated by the stark light of a camera flash capture an interest in American counterculture, as well as a playfulness with codes of sexuality and gender.

The exhibition will also feature a suite of Gertsch’s large woodcut prints, a medium which the artist devoted himself to exclusively between 1986 and 1995. Several prints from the series Natascha IV (1988) are based on the same image of a young woman, with a glacial, yet luminous expression. These are accompanied by Schwarzwasser (1991), a study of subtle movement on the surface of a body of water. For the first time, the limewood printing blocks used to print Natascha IV will also be exhibited, revealing the tiny raster-like gouges that Gertsch makes to register points of light.

Gertsch’s longstanding artistic interest in the mirror as a surface on which a myriad of such identities might be perceived is captured in a small collection of early works. In a number of early paintings, drawings and woodcut prints, including Spiegel (1961), and Mädchen vor dem Spiegel (1960), individuals are seen reflected in looking glasses and contemplating their reflections, pointing to a lifelong interest in capturing the nuances of the self.