Posted on
2013-07-08
Rüthi works directly from observation, creating complex formal compositions that bring together a variety of interests, with art historical references, found objects and his personal history all occupying equal importance and value of meaning. This exhibition can be seen to show the development of Rüthi’s distinct painterly style with new paintings made during the last four years, split into two series, the book paintings and the more recent Morandiesque still life paintings.
The title of the exhibition, ‘Home Is Where The Art Is’, refers not only to the making of his work and the ways in which his immediate environment influences his painting practice, but to the space and activities associated with domesticity and comfort. His studio is in a former slaughterhouse at the end of his garden and this sense of the uncanny or familiarity goes some way to suggest that the artist has thought about the dissonance between connotations of home. Notions of ‘home’ can of course point towards feminine domains, romantic clichés, cosy familial idylls, and yet persuade us to consider our trust in boundaries from the outside world created only by sand and water, bricks and mortar; a most unsettling reality. At its most basic level, the home is both a potential site of conflict and often of conflicting subjectivities or even ideologies. Though it can be a place where one might feel safe, find refuge, a place of belonging and community, it also holds the possibility of antagonism rather than harmony.
This analogy between the home and the studio clearly resonates strongly with Rüthi. With his pared down methodology – a toy, a book, a piece of fruit, a postcard, a pot, accessory, perfume bottle, shelf or tabletop – his paintings could have been made anywhere: in an unfurnished room devoid of comfort, perhaps a prison cell. The high drama of the everyday is material for the artist: it’s endlessly repeatable, an altar set up by a recidivist, a serial offender who paints the shadows between things.
Exhibition runs through to July 27th, 2013
Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens
An der Schanz 1a
D-50735 Cologne
Germany
www.haah.de
