Vivien Suter

Between December 2022 and March 2023, Vivian Suter shared hundreds of photos, all taken with her mobile phone, with the designer and editor of this book. A selection of these snapshots, condensed, juxtaposed, complementing each other, now forms a kind of photographic journal.

It offers insights into Suter’s work on her art and everyday life, which are inextricably interwoven: Photos of canvases and paint pots in the thicket of her jungle-like garden and in the studio, of her dogs, of the house with its characteristic aquamarine green and purplish-red walls, of family pictures, of the play of light and shadow in nature and architecture.

Among the many photos, one occasionally finds images of watercolours on (coloured) paper, which the artist made especially for the book.

Following Vivian Suter’s suggestion, a dried leaf is laid into each copy of the book. It comes from a strangler fig in her garden – the tree that, with its characteristic mesh of aerial roots, was key to Vivian Suter’s choice to settle on the magic spot by Lake Atitlán.

Published on occasion of the exhibition ‘Vivian Suter: A Stone in the Lake’, 28 Apr – 18 Jun 2023, Secession, Vienna.

English and German text.

Recent exhibitions include ‘Vivian Suter: Tintin’s Sofa’ at Camden Arts Centre in 2020, as well as ‘Vivian Suter’ at Tate Liverpool in 2019/20. Inside images courtesy of Secession, Vienna, taken by photographer Iris Ranzinger.

Walther Koenig, 2023
Softcover, 168pp
240 x 170mm