Marius LüscherUntitled Paintings

It is a strange “order appealing to no prior knowledge” that the abstract pictures of Marius Lüscher set before us, as Dieter Schwarz, formerly director of the Kunst Museum Winterthur, writes in his accompanying essay. At heights of 160 to 220 cm and in vertical format, the pictures refuse any impression of landscape, just as they avoid every allusion to the human figure, to which this format was traditionally reserved. “There is no internal articulation of the picture surface recalling anatomy, nor do the forms employed combine into ensembles that invite us to find ourselves bodily within them. Even the metaphor of architectural constructions does not apply.” Rather, the identity of the painted surface and of the picture surface dissolves; the forms stand on a neutral white ground with which they interact – transparency replaces opulence. “Out of the possibilities arising from this, which constitute not a stable but a variable set, the painting of Marius Lüscher has been constituted since 2010. Against the background of historical abstraction and the abstraction of the post-war period, the painter himself describes this work as ‚abstraction of abstraction‘, for he does not seek, as Roy Lichtenstein did, to depict abstract painting as a historical fiction; rather, he attempts to remain on the side of non-objective painting and to historicise it, to keep it alive as a real possibility for work.”