Haus der Kunst St. Josef – Marius Lüscher shows his work in Solothurn

The Bernese artist is present with his works in Solothurn. The exhibition in the Kunsthaus St. Josef reveals to the viewer insights into an extraordinary artistic creation.

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“Don’t Disturb This Groove” is what Marius Lüscher, born in Zurich in 1974, lives and works in Bern, calls his work in the Haus der Kunst St. Josef in Solothurn. Whereby «Groove» stands for all of his artistic work with the recurring, rather subliminal rhythmic-melodic elements, forms and effects.

Even if Marius Lüscher’s artistic intention is that of abstraction, which focuses on the formal and stylistic reduction to the essentials, on the free (or e.g. concrete) formulation of an image content, it is always the artist in his creativity who the essence of the picture determines – and also the perception of the viewer. But Lüscher’s pictures, whether in acrylic on canvas, as an offset print or a woodcut on a monotype, only appear at first glance like purely abstract compositions of both conceptual and free painterly processes, because one discovers figurative echoes, objectively associated, inspirations from the artist’s wealth of experience. Like music, for example, then the in-depth implementation of various techniques such as painting, printing techniques and photographic forays through Los Angeles during a longer stay.

Here, an intense group of images has come together, which Marius Lüscher concentrates under the pseudonym Freddy Perez in the illustrated book “Under the Sun – LA by Freddy Perez”: chromatic effects, scenic insights, moods that can be found in Edward Hopper, views reduced to the essentials. Impressively photographed specifications, the colors, the light of Los Angeles, which shape Marius Lüscher’s painterly oeuvre as well as the engagement with imaging media such as acrylic paint, printing techniques, fine brushes, coarse combs, spatulas, spray, figurative elements, the classic- associate modern artists, or symbolic fragments reminiscent of musical instruments or bodies, the inspiring music as an accompanying experience.

One discovers calligraphy in varying interpretations, comes across characters, notes or ciphers that seem to dissolve, suspects the strings of string instruments, physically familiar contours as multi-layered compositions of brittle or compact application of paint, clearly contoured forms and diffusely sprayed, delicately colored transparencies, graffiti-like , stenciled linear elements. The most varied of picture orders and basic patterns that overlap, enter into changing connections, vary from picture to picture, from content to content, from idea to topic, from topic to idea and repeat discreetly and as part of an overall concept an all-encompassing “groove” in itself carry.

Composition-rich pictorial means that he transfers to his own knowledge of abstraction by reducing these image, sound and color patterns to the essentials: to the interlocking and interplay of color, shape, surface, lines, conceptual and intuitive processes, to inner, personal and formally moving vibrations – with a figurative residual sound that runs like a red thread through the image events.

This artistically generous rhythm lives from a pop-like color scheme and an abstract-expressive visual vocabulary, also draws from a vibrating, occasionally striking lightness of color and form, so that the supporting conceptual principle is in a harmonious balance with artistic spontaneity .

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