Stefan Gritsch
Portrait of an Animal
Edizioni Periferia, Lucerne, 2023
Softcover, Softcover, open brochure with blind-stamped dust jacket and red-brown colored edges
504 pages, 140 × 210 mm
German, English
ISBN 978-3-907205-41-9
After Daylight (2004) and Body of Memory (2016), this is the third artist’s book that I have had the pleasure of designing together with Stefan Gritsch (*1951 in Bern). His artistic work constantly revolves around questions of existence, becoming and passing away, the process of seeing and perceiving, the relationship between art and life, and of course also the meaning of objectivity in the image, the boundary between space and surface, and what actually happens between letters and pictorial symbols in our minds.
Color as a body/material is constantly reused, deconstructed, rearranged, cut up and glued together again. Color is deposited in time and space. The artist as archaeologist of his own existence. Confusion, depression and total dissolution alternate with cheerful lightness and nonchalant gestures. I greatly admire Stefan’s work, as well as his calm demeanor (which of course only appears serene and light from the outside).
Published alongside the exhibition Portrait of an Animal at Galleria Periferia (April/May 2023).