Markus Raetz

Markus Raetz, born in 1941, is one of Bern‘s most famous contemporary artists and a key figure in the generation of “researchers of artistic perception”. His multi-faceted work playfully revolves around the processual nature of our experience of reality and makes us aware that, by using a great diversity of media and techniques, reality changes in relation to our standpoint.

Since the 1960s, Raetz has created numerous works, including more than 30,000 drawings. His work focused on drawings and paintings in the 1960s and 1970s, and continued with sculptures in the 1980s and 1990s, beginning with the sculpture Der Kopf in the Merian Park in Basel (1984). The principal topic of his work is the nature of perception. His works do not focus on what they portray, but on how they are perceived. They often require interaction by the viewer, and can be understood only when viewed in motion or from different angles.

Raetz is equally adept at producing print and three-dimensional artworks. The line as an element of design is not only manifest on paper but likewise in space. Thus lines form words, for example, which change their meanings relative to where the beholder stands, sometimes even into the opposite. This exhibition of prints and three-dimensional artworks thereby unfolds semantic fields and sensitizes our perception into finding new options for interpretation.

Billy Collins, who is presently poet laureate of the United States, has said that “a poem is like a ride,” and the poet who wrote it is “the first one to take that ride.” Raetz’s ride is a quiet one, but it makes the shifting sand we stand on pleasurable. We are moving. There are many points of view. But we hold our binoculars and gaze at whatever is out there.

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TL;DR
Raetz’s work evokes minimalism in the simplicity of the forms he creates. The perceptual shifts that one experiences when viewing his work is gradual and determined solely by the position the viewer chooses to take at the instance of viewing. Something to consider when producing my final artwork: Should the perception change introduced be one that is gradual, or one that shocks and provokes.