Roger Boltshauser with images by Philipp Schaerer Transformator

Exhibition
, Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

, Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

, Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

, Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

Roger Boltshauser mit Philipp Schaerer: Transformator (Foto: Jan Bitter)

To illustrate his idea of architecture, Roger Boltshauser contrasts seemingly different artifacts of his work. Though the selected drawings, reliefs and photos can indeed be understood as autonomous exponents, their actual importance as building blocks of a complete picture is revealed, however, in their interaction.

The sketches do not only provide a glimpse of the very personal process of design. Their craftsmanship can also be understood as a statement about the increasingly computer-influenced design process. Similarly, the four bronze reliefs also function ambiguously. Not only do they show Boltshauser’s great interest in the plastic molding of facades, but also symbolize the constant search for new forms of expression by modulating the existing. This drives research culminating in the large-format paintings that look like photographs. In fact, they are motifs that the artist Philipp Schaerer assembled digitally from a number of individual photos. Through precise additions, subtractions and substitutions, pictures of houses emerge that look like work by Roger Boltshauser. Since Schaerer’s constructed images subtly ask for closer examination, Boltshauser has found in him a congenial partner.

Presenting architecture in this way is unusual because Boltshauser does not draw from the classical representation of a current state. He is more interested in possibilities of interpretation. For that he foregoes his own interpretative right and purposefully incorporates a lack of definition through distortion and manipulation. The exhibition concept provokes new interpretations and thus impressively illustrates Roger Boltshauser’s credo: Thinking architecture means permanent transformation.

Roger Boltshauser (*1964) has directed his own office in Zurich since 1996. His most significant projects include the Equipment Building and Finish Line Tower Sihlhölzi, Zurich (2002), Lehmhaus Rauch, Schlins (2008), and the Atelier Dubsstrasse, Zurich (2010). The school pavilion Allenmoos II and the residential tower Hirzenbach, Zurich, are presently under construction. In 2012, he won the competition for the F property on Europaallee in Zurich.