Peter Wüthrich. TALES

Peter Wüthrich’s work evolves around the solid, but precarious fabric “book", which he uses for construction, colour, picture and lettering; like no other contemporary artist, Wüthrich has been working on the metamorphoses of the book with obsession and ease since the 1990's. Following and developing his poetic of the "book", his investigation may easily serve as additional reflection to the changes and questions in today’s media. tales is the first solo show in the region of Tessin, Switzerland and marks the beginning of a collaboration with [dip]. Featuring a selection of recent works, tales reflects the artist’s investigation into books, dissociating them from their original purposes to become infinite metaphors for the world, a recurrent interest which Peter has consistently explored over the course of a career spanning more than thirty years. tales showcases objects, installations, collages dealing with the life cycle and associations resulting from various literary references, poeticizing common objects in a magical act of transformation. Within the exhibition Wüthrich presents a visual poem: not story lines but images and emotions. At the core of the exhibition is the butterfly. The butterfly is a traditional and strong symbol within religions and mythological symbolism, connecting strongly to the cycle “life – death - resurrection”. Butterflies are everywhere, thus, the image of a butterfly plays such a central role for many artists, across different period of time. Butterflies are conceptually highly indebted to the basic principles of the chaos theory. A passionate collector of butterflies was the Russian American writer Vladimir Nabokov, author of the controversial novel “Lolita”. Butterflies are such an important starting point for Wüthrich that are included in the world map. Because everything is so interconnected, and everything has an effect on everything else, one thing leads inevitably to the other. Everything becomes connected, indeed, in chaos. And the references to great thinkers, which he appropriates, emphasizing the necessity for communication. And again books fly to new places, find new people, just as a flying butterfly.