Silvia Gertsch was born in 1963 in Bern. After years in Zurich and Bergamo (Italy) now she lives and works in Rüschegg near Schwarzenburg. Her pictures are captured moments painted behind glass. While the artist stands in front of the glass, her arm reaches around the glass and paints the back of it. Every brushstroke, every splash of color must sit, because there is no painting over, no correction. Everything is authentic, definitely. With the utmost discipline and concentration, she forgets the world around her to devote herself to her subjects. The picture templates, mostly mobile phone snapshots or video stills, are created on her forays. Children, young people in their free time and in everyday life, bathers, natural landscapes or nocturnal scenes are here motives. With the camera, she captures moments that point beyond the momentary to the imperishable and universally valid.

Silvia Gertsch shows us a window to a silent, pure and bright light that reveals itself on dancing waves or in sparkling drops of water, a living force that touches us in the depths of our hearts and transports us into a better world. Neither words nor mere intellect can describe this power. Only those who can free themselves from the noise and bustle of everyday life are touched and supported by it. When translating the templates into reverse glass painting, in which the immaterial light is represented by means of color, images emerge in which the figures and objects are bathed in a dreamlike, mysterious atmosphere. Virtuously she captures the light, the shade and the color while painting. Silvia Gertsch’s pictures shine out of themselves and miraculously cast a spell over the observer with their high intensity of color and light. As a painter, Silvia Gertsch succeeds in creating the miracle, beauty that we hide in the photographic snapshot as transient-cheap show effects, to lend credibility and duration. This delicate yet strong beauty reveals itself only in her painting.

„ I try to give expression to the light that I see and experience in the world. I give it form and color and let it come out of the dark.“

‹CAPTURED› is Silvia Gertsch’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Bernhard Bischoff & Partner. The motifs had been buzzing in the artist’s head for some time, now she has captured them, put them into painting and focused mainly on smaller formats.

All pictures: Bildkultur, Markus Mühlheim