When I was in Liechtenstein, I went to the Modern Art museum there. I was really impressed with the quality of the museum, especially in such a small country. They had a special exhibition about Swiss artist André Thomkins (whose estate had donated his works to the museum). I hadn’t come across him before, but I really enjoyed what I saw (and his large array of German puns), especially the short film where he was talking and demonstrating how he made marbled paintings by floating lacquer on top of water, something he started experimenting with after washing a brush he’d been painting furniture with.
Watching a man dropping oil paint onto a bathfull of water accompanied by space noises is strangely relaxing- you can see a video here, the website wouldn’t let me embed it. He seemed to turn his hands to anything that took his fancy, from palindrome surrealist poems to homemade instruments to intricate ink drawings. I imagine he was having lots of fun. I really enjoyed the bad German puns in the written work, but obviously they won’t do anything for you if you don’t speak the language.
The gallery has this video where they show you some of the exhibition. Strangely they don’t show that much of the artwork though. The video’s in German too. You do see some of the “Bureaucratic Drawings” made of rubber bands though.
(All images from Hauser & Wirth)