Paranoiadies
The first observer of a picture is always the artist themselves. But what does the artist do when the areas, rooms, canvases are still empty? How does the design process get going? With some an abstract thought leads to the first stroke, with Beat Bracher it’s the intensive study of another picture, usually a photograph. Followed by a second stroke, a colour, another stroke and so on until Beat Bracher is happy with himself and the picture. This process may be paranoid in a certain sense, against reason, but that does not therefore mean that it is absurd. The result is art that is at peace with itself. The NLZ newspaper’s art critic Kurt Beck once wrote that Bracher’s pictures are characterised “by strong, intensive colours, expressive imagery and interesting contrasts”. Which sums it up nicely.