Alex Schauwecker has built an oeuvre that is closely linked to his perception and observations. He is using his own identity as a starting point of his art thus trying not only to find images, which are strong and new, but also to broach the world at large. Whales, Ghosts and Other Stuff delivers insight into his enchanted universe appearing on photographs, paintings and drawings. This beautiful volume brings together a selection of the polymorphic production from the last couple of years, over the course of which Schauwecker has shaped his personal iconography of lust, loss and longing.
Schauwecker’s understanding of art attaches little value to chronology and formal organization or the conclusion of ‘things’. Instead he’s favoring an intuitional system of creation and proliferation: Things are always in between, they are charged with emotion and are seeking harmony as each image is connected to any other. Books are essential to his art practice as they combine the diverse images into sequences and at the same time transform a floating world into lasting objects.
Whales, Ghosts and Other Stuff synthesizes a wide range of resources in the form of a visual collage. The carefully crafted book captures elusive moments in the form of a girl undressing, a skateboard growing trees or a harlekin sawing himself in halves. Simple sketches, elaborate drawings, photographed still lives lay out an unresolved narrative through which Schauwecker drives to inscribe the too blank face of modern life with the personal and the handmade.
Alex Schauwecker (born 1982) is an artist of Swiss / German / Japanese origins who lives and works in Zurich. A trained graphic designer and photographer, he is rooted in skateboard culture. His work has been exhibited internationally. This is his first publication with Kodoji Press.
