The new pictures, the ‹Handy Girls› by Silvia Gertsch, testify to the familiar and peculiar intimacy of their protagonists, the girls and young women portrayed. Immersed in their smartphones, they seem absent and withdrawn; in the reflection of the screens in their hands, however, they literally light up and become ‘illuminated’, at least for us as the beholders. Or are we observers in this situation and by approaching being caught and also becoming observed? The images open up an alternating game between looking at, observing and being watched; between spontaneous cell phone photography, like the artist used it for earlier images already, and the poses or non-poses of women and girls. Especially since Silvia Gertsch met them on the way, but asked her permission to take pictures. She also learned their names, which gave the pictures their titles. Moments of tension also arise with the liveliness of the women who are at rest in themselves. In the light of their cell phones, they have a mysterious, almost sacred, Madonna-like aura. Conversely, reaching for a cell phone and looking at the screen is a common, familiar gesture in our everyday lives. Even if not for all the times. And there is as much focus and concentration in the looks as, conversely, aversion and distraction. ‹Kiara Maria›, the girl on the sofa, for example, looks less at the screen than over it. The artist met her at an event at the Swiss Embassy in Warsaw, and her eyes are evidently directed at the invited guests. A bit aside in the semi-darkness she sits on a sofa and secretly and slightly stealthily observes the goings-on under the cover of her cell phone. Seen in this way, the look behind the cell phone is not always absent and not always clearly recognizable.

The light on the pictures works like spot lighting: In alternation with the darker surroundings, the faces, bodies and hands are modeled and highlighted in a special way. And just as the mobile phone has a double meaning as a tool of the artist and as part of the picture motif, the spot as a light source in the pictures and the illumination of the pictures in the exhibition are in a certain way doubled. The picture-in-picture theme, popular in art, appears, although for once it is not pictures that are mirrored in pictures, but the external framework conditions inside the pictures. This means that the ‹Handy Girls› can also be located in the current discussion about the status of images and their artistic representation. As well as complex references to cultural and social issues can be made based on the picture series: for example on the ubiquity of computers and their influence on our behaviour or on women and their representation in art.

After all, the artist has always been fascinated by the phenomena and the magic of light and, by means of her reverse glass painting, gives it her own, apparent artistic form of haunting intensity.

Marc Munter 2021