Christoph Rütimann
Ohne Titel
Ohne Titel, 1995
Aus Polaroids
C-print, 50 x 50 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
1996-003-002
b. 1955 (Zurich, CH), lives and works in Müllheim, CH
Christoph Rütimann works in many different media and is known for his conceptual and compositionally precise approach. He works with the idea of free-floating energies that condense into streams and produce weight in the balance of a line on the wall, a curve in space, or a seismographic notation on paper. Yet it is in his Polaroids – narrative, theatrical scenes and stories in a snowbound setting, many of them actually staged during his winter holidays – that Rütimann’s lyrical side comes to the fore. He uses snow as a semi-translucent stage on which all manner of visual narratives and dramas can be set. Small scenes, into which he sometimes inserts portraits of himself and his girlfriend, are constructed from myriad fragments—cut-out photos, slivers of wood and sticks, sticky tape—to create a beautiful visual tapestry of, say, a garden with buildings of yellow, red or green bricks beside a little square pond of deep blue. His constructed, fragmented worlds combine to create a magical visual poetry.