16.6.–13.8.05

With Christian Indermühle and Elisabeth Llach two very different artistic positions can be seen again. ‹Aux Pays des Merveilles› abducts the visitors into special visual worlds, fictional and real places to live at; sometimes they can be difficult to keep apart. Since in artistic regard there can be several such fairy tale worlds, the title is written in plural. Christian Indermühle shows new large-format photographies, which were developed on his prolonged voyages. Like abstractedly, landscapes of intoxicating beauty reveal themselves. Last year he astound with night takings from the alps, whose only illumination came from the diffuse moonlight, shining on the snowy mountainside, so this year mainly shots from Nepal and China bring a new aesthetic in his works. The crossings of jungles to rivers cape, or the subtly curved elevated plain from the Kathmandu-valley are astounding archetypes of landscape. He photographed with the large picture camera. He let the new prints be done with a high-resolution ink-jet printer. The landscapes in ink, a well-known Chinese material, experience with this an unbelievable depth effect. Like painted the photographies are brought to paper. Together with the coloured works from Scotland or moss landscapes from Switzerland they communicate an overview of Christian Indermühles most recent works.

When there can hardly be seen any civilizing encroachments at Christian Indermühles, resp. even humans can be seen, thus at Elisabeth Llach even latter and especially individual, painted women portraits, which are thought provoking. All of her figures derive from conceived fairy worlds, mostly based on photographic templates from the fashion industry. She finds her models in newspapers or photographed from the TV screen. The artist paints with acrylic on thick paper. One feels the affinity to her drawings. She develops sketchy motives to expert ensembles, paints a girls body with women’s heads and other way round. There are always doll like, but perfidious plush sceneries, which attract and disgust at the same time. Issues like beauty, youth and brittleness Elisabeth Llach weaves to unmistakable compositions and operates with it at the pulse of time. In such a way the works receive that actuality one sometimes misses in contemporary painting.

Bernhard Bischoff, June 2005