All and nothing
An old blacksmith's box, a timer switch, a roller blind motor and nothingness. This is the very brief list of materials used by the Schwyz artist Thomas Baggenstos in his project Atrax. He moves away from the installation ‒ in this case the machine ‒ into nothingness. Lucerne painter Niklaus Schärer’s approach is the opposite. He takes his inspiration from the world at large; from long hikes through Gasterntal in the Bernese Oberland, from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s orchestral work Isle of the Dead, or from the latest trends in artificial intelligence. And all this input is condensed into nature-inspired paintings of various sizes. While Schärer and Baggenstos each come from a different generation of artists, their works form an ideal contrast within the confines of a gallery space.