Jean Gfeller
Bis Bald, 2024
Signé au dos
Huile sur toile
195 x 165 cm
Bis Bald (“see you soon” in German) represents an altered version of Jean Gfeller’s childhood village. Whereas many Swiss bunkers were painted as houses to better camouflage them, the artist takes the opposite route and transforms the buildings of his village into bunkers, as military metaphors for social isolation. In this way, he suggests a certain inward-looking attitude on the part of the inhabitants, who are overprotective and live in a form of hypersecurity that makes social contact impossible.
On the top left-hand corner of the composition, ornamental elements echo those found on the wall of his village’s town hall: the coats of arms of the cantons of Geneva and Vaud, that of the commune, as well as the Swiss flag and an enigmatic military figure whose origin and significance in the village’s history the artist has never found. In the center, a single road, the work’s only visible escape route, seems to lead towards the mountain, only to veer off to the right, drawing the eye back to the rows of bunkers.
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