Corsin Fontana

Corsin Fontana, a native of Chur who has been living and working in Basel for many years, will show four groups of work on paper created in late 2006 and 2007. Whereas his circular and oval compositions of the 90s were based on simple geometrical forms, his recent work has given way to a more radical vocabulary of exclusively horizontal and vertical lines in countless variations. As if writing in code, he either covers sheets of paper with mostly horizontal lines in different lengths and at rhythmical intervals, or he draws variations on vertical lines that meander across sheets of adjoining paper. In his most recent large-format drawings, Fontana uses coloured crayon, drawing lines of a relief-like materiality that resemble brushstrokes and form an almost completely compact surface. The off-white paper and lighter layers of color underneath look as if the light were penetrating narrow cracks between the superimposed lines.