Christoph Rütimann
Handrail Kunst Museum Winterthur
Edizioni Periferia, Lucerne, 2023
Hardcover
150 pages, 290 × 217 mm
German, English
ISBN 978-3-907205-40-2
Ed. by Konrad Bitterli, Published on the occasion of the exhibition Handrail Kunst Museum Winterthur, and Other Worlds (29.10.2022– 9.3.2023). With accompanying texts by Konrad Bitterli, Lynn Kost, Andrea Lutz, and David Schmidhauser.
Lines run through Christoph Rütimann’s (*1955 in Zurich) entire artistic universe. His work ranges from performances to sound, text, photo and video works up to classical means of expression such as drawing, painting and sculpture. In his art, there is always a perceptible reference to scientific questions, which Rütimann approaches in a playful manner, expanding the alleged rationality of scientific discourse to include the dimension of the imponderable. Despite all diversity, there are constants: the performative approach, the gamble with chance or gravity – and finally the line as a two- or three-dimensional demarcation. The latter, laid out in his extensive series of drawings, is expanded in the Handrails, which are realised in a wide variety of locations as part of the work complex Geh-Länder (Walk Lands): Rütimann directs the camera along banisters, architectural edges and lines that are suitable as camera rails. The video sequences cast an idiosyncratic view of the world from the perspective of the banister, of the building – including furniture. Often the camera rail is specially designed for a film project. This engenders a surprising shift of perspective and a close-up view of the handrail, which sets the pace of the video sequences, rhythmises them and at the same time evokes awareness of the performative act.