By reducing books to their objecthood and no longer thematising their content explicitly or through the legible presence of author and title, the artist prepares the basis for a formal transformation: he arranges them on the wall as individual pictures, in pairs or groups, in blocks or loose layouts, as colourful or monochrome colour field compositions (‘Von der Kunst Sträusse zu binden’, 1996/2023; ‘Adjectifs’, 2023).

At the same time, he establishes new references to the content of the books. Thus literature undergoes a transformation through Wüthrich’s transference into the realm of visual art, while retaining a connection to the content. Whether read or not, numerous titles of world literature are well known and evoke associations that are suitable for creating a recollective, pictorial or even emotional access for the beholder. With objects that present small collections of such titles, Wüthrich makes them intelligible to us in a humorous way – as crumpled individual pages in a display case (‘Herbier littéraire’, 2022) or as labels on ampoules in a pharmacy cabinet (‘Pharmacie littéraire’, 2017).

The book as a material and almost inexhaustible source for his sculptural and installational works is also encountered in architectural interventions. They are directly related to the exhibition space or absurdly contradict it. Wüthrich’s ‘Literarische Schichtungen’ (Literary Stratifications) sometimes stand in the space as a ‘masonry’ block layered from books or as walls seemingly under construction. And it remains essential and palpable that the artist uses a material that (beyond its formal properties) carries a spirituality through its original content.

‘A book, to me, is a symbol for us humans, for our past, our present and our future. The power that comes from a book is extreme, and it influences us, and inevitably always will.’ – Peter Wüthrich

In his examination of the printed products of literature, Wüthrich succeeds in refusing the conventionally assumed purposes as something used for function and pleasure. With allusions to everyday life, Peter Wüthrich lets us participate in his romantic view of what makes a book, materially and immaterially, and what digital media cannot do.

Peter Wüthrich lives in Interlaken, Switzerland. Since 1992, KEWENIG has dedicated several exhibitions to Wüthrich at its locations in Frechen/Cologne, Palma and Berlin. His works are represented in major collections, including: Espace d'art contemporain HEC, Paris; Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages, Berlin; Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen; State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece; Kunstmuseum Solothurn and Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland.