9 oktober tot 7 november

For the second time VOUS ETES ICI shows work by the Swiss artist Reto Boller (* 1966, Zürich). Boller followed his education at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Zürich, Switzerland and at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

In the nineties art was dominated by video-art and photography. A banal question that occurs to you is why Reto Boller started to paint. Not that painting was "dead", as many people had been suggesting, but it did very much shift into the background of artistic discourse at that time. Reto Boller on the other hand, had been painting since the beginning of his career, though admittedly rarely on canvas, the classical support. Boller experiments with all kinds of unusual material, like silicone paste, glue, acrylic and aluminium. Artists that inspired Boller are Blinky Palermo, Elsworth Kelly and artists from the Minimal Art movement.

There are two principal types that can be discerned in Reto Boller's work. There are in situ works, which have a temporarily character, and there are works made in the studio that can be moved around and last forever. His ""moveable"" works are also a reference to the classical canvas. With the three-dimensional character of his paintings, Boller tries to make a link between painting and sculpture. For the viewer it is not always completely clear what the borders of the artwork are. A wall, space and surroundings are normally aspects that are being left out by the piece of art. Not in Reto Boller's work, where these aspects become part of the artwork itself.

The work of Reto Boller stays open for different interpretations of what it represents: landscapes, body parts, cell structures or just nothing in particular? He never gives his work a title. He consistently avoids even "Untitled". He simply provides pragmatic information, for example materials, date or measurements. Boller doesn't want to pin himself down to a title. This approach shows that he is interested in keeping the possible meaning neutral, not wanting to bias them in a particular direction, so that their content can develop freely.
2004