{"id":37951,"date":"2026-03-24T17:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T17:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/37951\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T17:09:15","slug":"walter-pichler-die-bleche-und-ich-gehen-heim-contemporary-fine-arts-basel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/37951\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter Pichler, “Die\u00a0Bleche\u00a0und ich\u00a0gehen\u00a0heim” Contemporary Fine Arts \/ Basel\u00a0\u00a0 |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Walter Pichler by Cyprien Gaillard, \u201cDie Bleche und ich gehen heim.\u201d Exhibition view at Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel, 2026. Photography by Gina Folly.
\nCourtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel\/ Berlin. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s\u00a0most striking about \u201cDie\u00a0Bleche\u00a0und ich\u00a0gehen\u00a0heim\u201d at Contemporary Fine Arts in Basel is how the show handles motion and stillness. This\u00a0solo presentation, curated by Cyprien Gaillard,\u00a0assembles drawings and sculptures by\u00a0Walter\u00a0Pichler, born in 1936 in South Tyrol, now part of Italy.\u00a0Pichler\u00a0graduated from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1955\u00a0and\u00a0started\u00a0exhibiting\u00a0with Hans Hollein, who would become a prominent architect in the latter half of the century.\u00a0In 1967, Pichler showed in New York with Hollein and Raimund Abraham, another architect, and in\u00a01968\u00a0he was included in\u00a0Documenta.\u00a0His work at that\u00a0time was futuristic with a lower-case \u201cf\u201d:\u00a0he used new materials like polyester, integrated media, and created\u00a0forms that appear influenced by bubble-shaped sci-fi architecture designed for life on other planets. Take\u00a0TV-Helm\u00a0(1967), a wearable sculpture made of white varnished polyester with an integrated functional\u00a0video\u00a0monitor and an attached antenna. When worn, the piece blocks outside sensory impressions, and it protrudes bulbously at the front and the back, not unlike a phallus or a rocket. It looks even less practical than modern VR goggles, and Pichler\u2019s sketch for the device betrays his sense of humor: a figure wearing the device stumbles\u00a0forward, arms outstretched. A later variant\u00a0that\u00a0only includes audio seems less cumbersome, more beehive-shaped; both are in line with Space Age design\u00a0\u2014\u00a0though perhaps not\u00a0for\u00a0other planets but\u00a0instead a future\u00a0with\u00a0unlimited media consumption and screen time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The decade was marked by early success, but the pressure of having to produce did not suit Pichler. He retreated to the country, first for a summer, then permanently: for space, access to materials, and financial independence. In the early 1970s, the region Burgenland was the cheapest place to buy property in Austria because of its\u00a0proximity\u00a0to the Iron Curtain. Pichler bought a cottage in this\u00a0unremarkable rural landscape and decided to set up a studio there. Soon, other artists followed, among them, later, Martin Kippenberger.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Walter Pichler, Kleiner Doppelter Wanderer (St. M. 16.9.85), 1985. Pencil and tempera on paper. 29 x 21 cm. Photography by Jochen Littkemann. Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel\/ Berlin. <\/p>\n

\"\"Walter Pichler, Doppelkopf, 1987. Metal, wood and clay. 135 x 61 x 60 cm. Photography by Gina Folly. Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel\/ Berlin. <\/p>\n

Pichler started working differently, and more slowly. It is tempting to read his development as a step away from the industrial materials of the\u00a0previous\u00a0decade toward something more archaic,\u00a0just\u00a0as\u00a0it is\u00a0tempting to interpret it as a move away from early fame and the constraints of institutional\u00a0art-making. Wood began to feature prominently in his work, alongside clay and straw. The only thing that\u00a0remains\u00a0is his obsession with helmet-like hoods, executed in metal, the\u00a0Sch\u00e4deldecken, which gleam from his assemblage-like sculptures. For each piece, Pichler constructed a house,\u00a0making them site-specific. He would draw on local building techniques, and he would enlist local artisans to craft the frames for his drawings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The gallery\u2019s Basel location is tucked away in a narrow alley in the medieval city. The exhibition, which occupies a modest space in a low-ceilinged old building, draws on the second phase of Pichler\u2019s oeuvre. In fact, the artist Cyprien Gaillard, who curated the show, picked drawings made soon after Pichler\u2019s move to the countryside, as well as three sculptures. Pichler is considered an artist\u2019s artist,\u00a0perhaps not\u00a0the most widely collected \u2014\u00a0in spite of\u00a0his early success \u2014 but quietly influential. This prompted Gaillard to travel to the Burgenland region on a gray November weekend to select the drawings and sculptures.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first piece visible through the window is\u00a0Kleiner Rumpf\u00a0(1997) \u2014 small torso \u2014 a figure, sitting on a stool, whose limbs\u00a0appear to be\u00a0chopped off, made from wood, straw, clay, lead, and tin. Further into the space, there is\u00a0Der rote Stab\u00a0(2003), suspended at eye level from the ceiling, like a projectile in mid-air, maybe designed for flight into outer space, and possibly a reference to Pichler\u2019s work of the 1960s. Atop the wooden rod there are small encasings, like the model of a futuristic city. If the show were a narrative, this would be a violent introduction, one that is in stark tension with the tender drawings on the walls.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Walter Pichler, Kleiner Wagen (St. Martin), 1978. Ink and tempera on paper. 49.5 x 70 cm. Photography by Gina Folly. Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel\/ Berlin. <\/p>\n

Pichler was an accomplished\u00a0draftsman. Not only did he conceive plans for his buildings with architectural precision, but he also made many studies for his sculptures, as if the drawings were essential to the process of finding a form. Some of them were not intended as autonomous works, and in the first room of the Basel exhibition some are executed on thin tracing paper. One, dated\u00a031.1.1973, shows figures in faint pencil, once in an embrace, then, bigger, in the process of coming apart. The\u00a0reddish brown\u00a0ink has wrinkled the paper, highlighting its fragility.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Walter Pichler, Ohne Titel \/ untitled. Pencil and tempera on transparent paper. 21 x 29.7 cm. Photography by Nick Ash. Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel\/ Berlin. <\/p>\n

The artist seems drawn in two directions: sculpture and architecture, human and urban, exemplified by organic pieces in earthy materials, and contrasted by his early sketches of bubbly capsules for living. Small receptacles for sculptures, drawings of\u00a0\u2014 possibly \u2014 agonized\u00a0figures and then spherical architecture, designs for fantastic cities:\u00a0somehow\u00a0they\u00a0all\u00a0collapse into one another,\u00a0rendering\u00a0everything at a human scale. Pichler, who passed away in 2012, was averse to ideas, but he has a strange preoccupation with heads, helmets, and skullcaps. In the preface to a 2007\u00a0catalogue\u00a0he admitted that he was surprised how often heads appear in his work. One of these pieces \u2014\u00a0Doppelkopf\u00a0(1987), which means double head, but is also the name of a card game \u2014 takes center stage in the second room of the gallery. Sculpture and pedestal are indistinguishable, as if the skull is a primary piece of architecture, with the empty area under its cap holding space for what?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Walter Pichler, Vater mit Sch\u00fcrze, 1999. Pencil, tempera, and ink on paper. 29.7 x 21 cm. Photography by Jochen Littkemann. Courtesy of Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel\/ Berlin. <\/p>\n

This obsession and his fascination with the archaic and the rural may make him seem like an outsider artist, but he\u00a0remained\u00a0in close exchange with the art world, not just in Vienna but internationally. He showed in New York in 1977, this time with Leo Castelli. In 1982, he\u00a0represented\u00a0Austria at the Venice Biennial, but he had to ask for the deadline to be extended. Pichler\u2019s slow pace, approaching stillness, is often mentioned, as is the situatedness of his sculpture. In the Basel show, however, a number of works deal with motion and its representation:\u00a0Kleiner Wagen (St. Martin)\u00a0(1978)\u00a0is\u00a0a drawing of a figure pulling an oversized cart composed of four precisely rendered wheels, while the figure consists of nervous pencil lines; others are populated by figures whose movement is broken into different frames,\u00a0suggesting a\u00a0preoccupation\u00a0with motion like a capital-\u201cF\u201d Futurist painting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The work of Pichler and Gaillard is specific to a place. Gaillard, however, is itinerant, and he is quick to adapt to the deep history of a place, while Pichler\u2019s work is connected to a single place. Gaillard neither reveals his curatorial concept for this show nor explains how he selected the works. He opted for a through-line that works by association and formal similarity, not unlike his own work.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walter Pichler by Cyprien Gaillard, \u201cDie Bleche und ich gehen heim.\u201d Exhibition view at Contemporary Fine Arts, Basel,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[77,22223,22224,22225],"class_list":["post-37951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basel","tag-basel","tag-cfa-basel","tag-contemporary-fine-arts","tag-walter-pichler"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116285260884893987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}