Urs Stooss

Born in Bern in 1943, Urs Stooss trained in interior architecture in Geneva. He has worked as an independent artist since 1970 and lives and works in Bern. Initially a draughtsman and painter, he developed a practice combining photography and painting: while travelling, he photographs people in public spaces and then transforms these images into elaborate compositions in the studio.

The figures, often seen from above, are displaced and reassembled in new scenes. Cropping and enlargement attenuate individual markers; postures, gestures and shadows become the principal indications of presence and movement. Anonymous silhouettes walk, meet, play or engage in sport in a space without a clearly defined horizon.

This construction leaves viewers free to imagine the relationships between the figures and the narrative of the scene.

Stooss works in particular on canvas with monochrome backgrounds in gold, silver or mother-of-pearl tones, which he prepares from pigments and binders. The reflective surface and the shadows lend depth to places that are often stripped of their context. His recurring subjects include human figures, urban spaces and holiday resorts; some recent works also take up motifs of athletic movement and architectural ensembles.

His process, combining photography, digital retouching, montage and painting, explores the way in which an image can recompose an observed situation.

He received the Aeschlimann Prize of the City of Bern in 1972 and the Federal Fine Arts Grant in 1971, 1973 and 1976. His works are held in several public collections, notably at Inselspital Bern, the upper court of Biel and Stiftung Bächtelen, according to Galerie Soon.