A collection of works by Swiss artist Andreas Dobler, based in Zurich. The artist is known for his diverse styles, including visual poetry, painting, drawing, collage, and objects. By adding text to his visual works, they are reconstructed into speculative poetry, giving rise to new pictorial discoveries. Some of the texts trace their origins back to the “Academy of Happiness,” a fictional school that serves as the setting for the artist’s narratives. Craftsmanship tutorials, technical considerations, literary descriptions of the school grounds and facilities, and fantasies of teachers and students are among the various elements that playfully and ironically depict a “utopia of an ideal place of development.”
Andreas Dobler’s third artist’s book to date showcases the diversity of his artistic oeuvre, which includes visual poems, paintings, drawings, collages and objets d’art. Its suggestive title, ST. ELSEWHERE, opens up the range of possibilities to embrace far-flung and other-worldly artistic assertions, and the book opens a window on the artist’s intense working process. Dobler’s visual productions are accompanied by textual offshoots, which he reworks into speculative poetry and, in turn, generate new pictorial discoveries. Some of his writings trace the origins of the featured works back to an “Academy of Happiness”, a make-believe school that looms large in ST. ELSEWHERE and around which Dobler weaves narrative strands. Tutorials and technical considerations of craftsmanship, literary descriptions of the school grounds and facilities, the reveries of teachers and students and various other associated elements add up to a playful and ironic take on the utopia of an ideal place of development.
