LUCERNE.- Did you know that small, neutral Switzerland once wanted to become an atomic power? And that in 1945 it was not even so badly positioned for this? Under the leadership of the renowned physicist Paul Scherrer and his successors, a commission dealt with the civilian and military use of nuclear power 1946–1988. What we see and perceive in history is determined by numerous filters: medial, political, contemporary, social, personal. Gilles Rotzetter is interested in the blind spots and the forgotten storerooms of history. His latest work cycle and the exhibition Swiss Atomic Love are dedicated to this piece of forgotten Swiss history.
Over a period of two years Gilles Rotzetter undertook research in different archives on this little known aspect of Swiss history. His artistic research meanders through the history of the Swiss atomic bomb, digresses, takes up on people and facts, makes associative leaps, and always returns to questions: What is history? How does memory work? Correspondence, archival documents, newspaper articles, lexical entries, photographs – things collected along the way, as well as thoughts, flow directly or indirectly into Rotzetter's visual world.
For Gilles Rotzetter, Paul Scherrer becomes a ghostly figure, due to his biographical incomprehensibility and his activities for the US Secret Service. He paints the portrait of the physicist more with the texture of paint rather than with shades of color, pastose lines sketch a dark bust portrait in profile (PScherrer’s night, 2016). The Atomic pilgrim, on the other hand, ascends the mountain in Rotzetter's bright colors. The figure, hiking toward the pass and bent with its heavy load, acts like a Swiss cliché. The painterly gesture is powerful and energetic.
Gilles Rotzetter prefers to deal with the unsightly side of things: cracks, confusions and errors. Damages and fears are often the starting point of his pictures. The way he captures them as visual stories is like a mythological world view. The artist says, he likes «things that are hard to like.» His paintings and drawings may and even should be frightening, repelling, offensive. Ultimately, they confront the audience with an unvarnished world. Gilles Rotzetter's filter is not rose-colored, he does not show any impertinent ease, but meets the horrors of the world with a pinch of gallows humor.
Gilles Rotzetter (*1978, Vevey) studied 2001–2006 Art History and Art by Peter Roesch at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) He graduates in 2006. In 2016, he obtains a MA at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. He had several solo shows, notably at Espace Niki de St-Phalle/Jean-Tinguely in Fribourg (2013), at Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (2012) and at Fri-Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2008). The Fine Arts commission of the City of Lucerne dedicated Volume 13 of the series Young Art in the City of Lucerne to Gilles Rotzetter. While the book offers a monographic survey of Gilles Rotzetter’s exuberant art, the exhibition focuses on his current work groups related to the Swiss atom bomb.
Curated by Eveline Suter
