by Adela Lovric // Nov. 14, 2023
Life on the shores of Lake Maggiore seems perfectly carefree. On most days, this body of water is just as peaceful, reflecting far more dramatic views of the surrounding Alps and cloud formations on its buttery smooth surface. Around the time when the sun rises and sets, this contrasting view transforms with natural light into a postcard cliché. Over the past centuries, many artists have tried to immortalize it—the mountains, in particular—in their landscape paintings, drawings and photographs. Even when they’re not the main subject of these artworks, as is especially the case in the paintings of the late 19th, early 20th-century Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler, these Alpine peaks found their way into the background of countless landscapes.
Thomas Huber: ‘1.1.22,’ 2022, Oil on canvas, Art collection Zürcher Kantonalbank // Photo by Marlene Burz, © Thomas Huber & Skopia / P.-H. Jaccaud / 2023, Pro Litteris, Zurich
It feels impossible to talk about Thomas Huber’s current exhibition at MASI Lugano without giving this bit of context. Titled ‘Lago Maggiore,’ the show presents his new body of work consisting mostly of large-scale paintings, initially conceived as watercolor sketches in a house overlooking the eponymous lake, and later reproduced in oil on canvas at the artist’s studio in Berlin. With titles referring to dates when the sketches were made, the artist reveals an almost scientific approach to this series of repetitions of the same motifs. Even more so, he hints at letting the audience in on something quite intimate—a diaristic collection of snapshots of his outer world through the lens of personal, inner transformation.
Thomas Huber: ‘Lago Maggiore,’ 2023, MASI Lugano, Installation view // © MASI Lugano, Photo by Sabrina Montiglia
For Huber, this series of works represents a sort of homecoming, of returning to the vistas that surrounded him growing up in Switzerland. It also represents a pictorial break that resulted from internal and external changes that he experienced over the past few years. Huber is typically known for his dreamlike paintings of fictive architectural structures and his characteristic use of mise-en-abyme. Since taking up residence in a village on the Italian-Swiss border, his meticulous, two-dimensional architectural worlds have been almost entirely replaced by breathtaking lake and mountain views. What remained are open spaces and interiors, mostly reimagined versions of the artist’s home, now competing with his painterly reconstructions of nature.
Thomas Huber: ‘Lago Maggiore,’ 2023, MASI Lugano, Installation view // © MASI Lugano, Photo by Sabrina Montiglia
Much like the place where they were conceived, Huber’s atmospheric artworks demand physical presence to unleash their effect, which plays out through color, contrast, depth and scale. Installed on the museum walls so that the horizon lines up with the viewer’s eye level, the paintings tend to mimic an immersive experience. However, the artist tames these expansive images with clean shapes and smooth brushstrokes. Surprisingly, though, his precise, flattened style doesn’t take much away from the liveliness of his landscapes. While depictions of natural beauty generally fall short of eliciting the awe experienced firsthand, Huber comes impressively close with his evocative play of light and shadow, even when everything else seems to fall victim to his architectural gaze and geometrical precision stifling nature’s unruly intricacy.
Thomas Huber: ‘Heimkehr,’ 2021, Oil on canvas, Private collection // Photo by Julien Gremaud, © Thomas Huber & Skopia / P.-H. Jaccaud / 2023, Pro Litteris, Zurich
‘Lago Maggiore’ confidently revels in simplicity and contemporary continuation of a dated painterly tradition. The monotony of repetition is broken by the exhibition layout and the artist’s surrealistic pieces, both of which can be likened to deeper layers of the psyche. Developed in close collaboration between the artist and the museum, the show includes a body of impromptu watercolors on which the paintings were based. They are presented in an intimate, walled space within the exhibition hall, separated from the more “processed” oils on canvas.
With ‘Heimkehr’ (2021), a symbolism-laden painting displayed in the main hall, Huber dips into the subconscious again, evoking the dream-like mysticism of Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte. The image-within-an-image and the liminal space where objects and their metaphorical meanings intertwine tie this new body of work to Huber’s broader practice of exploring the relationship between the imaginary and the real. Simultaneously, the walls of his pronounced interiority open toward the ever more precious outdoors, signaling perhaps a rite of passage that is both a return and a leap into the unknown.
Exhibition Info
MASI Lugano
Thomas Huber: ‘Lago Maggiore’
Exhibition: Oct. 8, 2023-Jan. 28, 2024
masilugano.ch
Piazza Bernardino Luini 6, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland, click here for map
