Atmosphäre der Durchlässigkeit
Cécile Wick «Visions of the World»
Cécile Wick (born 1954) is among the most important Swiss artists of the middle generation and represents a quiet but persistent voice in contemporary photographic art. The exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts Bern is dedicated to a so far little-known aspect of Cécile Wick’s work. It offers a comprehensive overview of the print works created in the last ten years.
These consist of 16 groups of works comprising four to six heliogravures respectively as well as a selection of inkjet prints which are being presented for the first time. The long-forgotten technique of heliogravure, allowing of an infinite spectrum of tonal values, is very appropriate to Cécile Wick’s pictorial intention. Her depictions of mountains, waterfalls, oceans, flowers and blossoms, distinguished by fine nuances of colour and subtle gradations between dark and light, can therefore progress to the dissolution of the pictured object in the white of the mist, of the sky, of nothing. Thus, she can successfully paint pictures of landscapes that can be determined neither temporally nor geographically. They can be likened to the landscape paintings of East Asia, keeping to the borderline of the abstract, dissipating into the immaterial. A richly illustrated catalogue is being published by the Benteli Verlag to accompany the exhibition including texts by Matthias Frehner, Claudine Metzger and Nadine Olonetzky as well as a complete catalogue raisonné of prints.
