Twenty­five years after his last solo show at the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the museum is devoting a comprehensive exhibition titled Bones n’ Roses to the Lenzburg­based artist Stefan Gritsch (b. 1951). The practice of the nationally acclaimed artist is rooted in painting whose fundamental principles he expands into many different direc­tions. In addition to the recurring exploration of paint as material, the exhibition presents current groups of works and themes.

The bones and acrylic “roses” which give the exhibition its title form the work HORIZON (2019) on the wall. Paint is torn off in the TEARINGS (2018), and in the IMPACTS (2017 – 2019) it is used to hit the white paper and make it colourful. In the room­size installation INVERSION (2019) the artist turns the inside of one of his characteristic paint blocks out.

For his WARFLOWERS (2017–2018) and CARPETS (2018), two groups of works little known to a wider public, Gritsch used maps of centres of conflict as a basis. We encounter a new ornamental, seductive language of forms confronting themes of transience and destruction.

The oeuvre of Stefan Gritsch is a work about time. Materials and older works are reused and rearranged. As temporary statements, they visualise the processual character of his artistic practice. The artist himself is present on a regular basis in the exhibition to revise the way his drawings, prints, photographs, objects and tools are presented, thereby creating an exhibition that is in motion.