Gunther Wizemann

Gunther Wizemann, born 1953 in Graz (Austria), came to Switzerland as a child in 1960. He graduated from Zurich's School of Design and has since been working as a painter and concept artist. Studying the Russian modernists raised the question of what he could possibly paint in the aftermath of Kazimir Malevich and Aleksander Rodchenko. Equally, Mario Merz's installation Che fare? or, as Barnett Newman put it, What to paint? were statements that became programmatic for Wizemann's work. The 43 paintings of The Black Garden Wizemann has created between 2003 and 2013 are a possible response to his queries. Done in oil and resin on canvas, they are the result of lengthy artistic processes and a multitude of layers of paint, forming an inner and outer image space. Featured in its entirety for the first time in this new book, the paintings are published alongside essays placing Wizemann's largest series to date in art history. The accompanying texts reveal formal and conceptual relations, ranging from the Renaissance to his contemporaries. Starting from the title The Black Garden they also look at literary and philosophical connotations.