Stefan a Wengen (Swiss born 1964)

Life and Work:

Since the 1990s, Stefan a Wengen has worked on larger groups of works that investigate questions of cultural codes and memory. Issues such as the foreign or the strange, death and memory, melancholy, existence, sexuality, anxiety, and the uncanny form the core of his artistic work. Empty landscapes, animal and human portraits, and reoccurring representational motifs make up part of his pictorial repertoire. His motifs are reminiscent of images from art history, film, or the subconscious.

Starting from the strange and uncanny, Stefan a Wengen uses his serial working method to explore questions about the culture and nature of human existence. With recourse to art history, ethnology, literature, philosophy, film, media as well as his own memories mysterious sceneries develop, which offer viewers a reflection of their own world of experience along with all its abysses. Symbolic pictorial elements are combined to form a new, individual pictorial reality, which emanates something threatening and oppressive. Skulls, animal skeletons, and moths painted with great attention to detail evoke an awareness of the transience of earthly existence. Mysterious interiors, lonely architectures, or abandoned boats in alien landscapes 
address themes such as fear, strangeness, and the other. Influenced by the artists individual travel experiences through the jungle, his motifs recall the beginnings of human history.

The ongoing series of works Detected Dictionary (since 2014) is dedicated to images of cultural memory. Worn-out teddybears, flower still lifes, toadstools and animals, all isolated on a 30 x 25 cm canvas mounted on wood, belong to this wunderkammer of the subconscious. The pictures in this series are strictly black-and-white with various shades of gray, accentuating à Wengens technically sophisticated and detailed painting style.