Wetter Walter

1962, Schweiz
Installations-Lichtkünstler, Audioeditor


«...Die gezeigten «Industrial Art» Werke bleiben in letzter Konsequenz ­immer ernst und strahlen neben aller Schönheit Bedrohliches aus. Sie ­zielen eben auf unser Unterbewusstsein, dass trotz rationaler Objektivität des menschlichen Strebens doch immer eine kritische Distanz zur in­du­s­triellen Entwicklung behält...»

Walter Wetter works with metal elements, cast parts, industrial and electrical scrap, glass scrap, and items recovered from industrial demolitions or that he has collected from his forays to flea markets. The extensive range of forms and materials that is stacked in the artist’s studio is the source of inspiration for the box and light objects he creates, for example, Sirius, 2002 that was shown at the Expo 02 in the BarRouge in Basel.

The artistic process of taking individual parts that exist in the real world, altering and converting them, connecting them with high-tech components using free combinatorics. and transferring the latent form characteristics of the found objects into new and unexpected meanings and contexts shows the kinship of Wetter’s art with Surrealism. The installation (Untitled, 2005) that Walter Wetter has set up in one of the artistcabinetts has an enigmatic air. A human figure is divided into two halves and mounted left and right on the wall. Cables and hoses connect the parts to a luminous post and to a wooden box that is on the floor. The networking of the figure and the device evokes thoughts of the post-biological future of humankind and the artificial world of the cyborg, if not for the control units that are inside the wooden box that provides an almost nostalgic reference to earlier times.
Kathrin Frauenfelder, art historian, Zürich, Switerland