Title Roger Boltshauser, Response
Year 2022
Client Roger Boltshauser
Photographer Luca Ferrario
Cooperation Boltshauser Architekten, Zürich
Curators Boltshauser Architects in collaboration with Andrea Gassner
Exhibition duration December 08, 2022 to January 14, 2023

Roger Boltshauser’s artistic work cannot be explained without referencing his architectural work, equally it is hardly possible to fully understand  his architecture without considering his artistic work. Our task was to illustrate this and, at the same time, to depict his method of responding to design questions and the consistently practiced interference of architecture and art.

Roger Boltshauser entrusted Atelier Andrea Gassner with the graphic-scenographic design of his exhibitions and prints. In its work, the studio spins this interplay between architecture and art further. For example, the cover of the 500-page monograph “Roger Boltshauser” is not decorated with a striking architectural image, but with one of his dominant sketches.

This sketch connects to the exhibitions of Roger Boltshauser’s work: In 2021, the monograph – edited by Martin Tschanz and already out of print – was presented at the Architektur Galerie in Berlin, as were various other sketches. In the exhibition at the Galerie d’Architecture in Paris in 2022, this sketch in turn transformed the entrance into a room-sized, walk-in drawing. Architectural models stood like sculptures on mighty black pedestals. Sketches and plans were connected to each other by the same deep wooden frames, as well as by a hanging that spanned the wall. On a filigree metal shelf, selected material samples created the link between the depicted and the material.

The Paris show is now moving on, if you will, to the Architekturgalerie am Weissenhof in Stuttgart. But the photographs will not simply be taken down here and hung up there again, the models and the earth samples will be reined in. No, the construction continues. Layer by layer, Stuttgart on Paris on Berlin, the places themselves become part of the history and the development of “RESPONSE”. In Stuttgart, the large-format picture panels show photographs of the photographs from the Galerie d’Architecture in Paris.
But it is not just that the photographs document the previous exhibitions, but the models, sketches, and plans also expand and enrich each subsequent exhibition layer by layer with new content and perspectives. And of course the texts.

Title Artistic Loop
Year 2022
Client Wilhelm Otten
Photographer Günter König, Christopher Walser, Wilhelm Otten, Franziska Messner-Rast, Dietmar Mathis, Michael Pezzei
Publisher ENIGMA ART KG
Concept and Text Wilhelm Otten, Natalie Kreutzer
Editing Gertrud Kainz
Producing Buchdruckerei Lustenau GmbH
ISBN 978-3-200-08414-8
A catalog about the longstanding friendship between Wilhelm Otten and Gottfried Honegger and his artistic work. A catalog in two parts, with no beginning or end, the transition between which reveals the turning point of this friendship – the death of Honegger. Numerous discussion throughout the friendly relationship led Wilhelm Otten to create a platform for encounters with people interested in art. In 2005 he opened up his art collection, entering it into a public dialogue. As a representative of Concrete Art, Gottfried Honegger is one of the most important Swiss artists of the 20th century. In his long and – to the very end – highly creative life, he created an extensive oeuvre. For Honneger art was more than just jewelry for the elite, he saw it as an existential necessity for all. He brought it back to the primal forces: form, color and material. His geometric art contrasted the smooth and rough / glossy and matt / radical and forgiving. The design of the book encompasses this dichotomy in its concept. The photographic language of museum representation complements that one of art in context. The interplay of smooth and rough paper follows the glossy and matt screen print finishes of the cover. The two parts of the book are linked together into an endless loop of content, reflecting Honegger’s artistic work.
Title Martin Rauch, Refined Earth
Year 2022
Client Martin Rauch
Photographer Markus Bühler-Rasom, Benedikt Redmann, Beat Bühler, Bruno Klomfar, Hanno Mackowitz
Editor Otto Kapfinger, Marko Sauer
Publisher DETAIL, Institut für internationale Architektur-Dokumentation
Length 168 pages
ISBN 978-3-95553-571-1
Awards Shortlist – Schönste deutsche Bücher
A book for practical work and information. The main focus is on the many years of experience that this builder in clay has acquired, organized according to the themes: floor, wall, opening, ceiling. These four chapters in the middle of the book are deliberately designed in black and white, structured by generously sized introductory pictures and axonometric plan drawings. The plans, which were produced especially for the book, play a leading role in the explanations. Thin strips running along the edges of the pages at different positions in the core book guide the reader. In the volume of the book itself the strips create a striking sectional image – in the list of contents they form thematically based pictograms. Colour illustrations surround the core content: a series of pictures of completed buildings at the front, photos of building processes and the workshop at the back. The horizontal texture of layers of rammed earth is cut into the dust cover. You feel tempted to run your finger across this image in order to make the cut paper and the lettering printed on it move. On the cover the tactile quality of this building material is both echoed and honoured.