Tobias Spichtig’s artistic practice fuses glittering Warholian aesthetics with a sharp, subversive lens on contemporary culture. Exploring everyday objects and situations, his works often blur the boundaries between mass production and individuality. Printed and overpainted, his paintings humorously deconstruct the conventions of their own medium while grappling with the complexities of the human condition.
“Through Spichtig’s brush, bodies, faces, flowers, or mountains never quite emerge from their planar surfaces. His particular approach to painting eradicates depth and volume, delineating people and objects by means of hard lines, ensuring that each picture’s subject holds its pose in strange, morbid stillness…In painting, drips are to be avoided. Generally considered blunders, they are thought to interrupt what a painter might otherwise be trying to represent: this is what painting tutorials will tell you. Except Tobias Spichtig doesn’t seem to agree.“ Elena Filipovic notes in her exhibition text published on the artist solo show at Kunsthalle Basel in 2024.
Born in Switzerland in 1982, Spichtig is based between Paris and Berlin and has exhibited extensively on an international scale. His solo exhibitions have been presented at prestigious institutions such as the Swiss Institute in New York, Kaleidoscope Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, the Centre d’art contemporain in Delme, SALTS in Basel, and Museum Folkwang in Essen. Spichtig’s most recent solo exhibitions include his 2024 show at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland.
Born 1982 in Sempach, Switzerland
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Selected solo exhibitions
2024
A Muse and an Angel on a Graveyard, Eugster Belgrad, Serbia
It’s Beautiful When the Spirits Arrive, TAO Art Space, Taipeh, Taiwan
People, Jan Kaps, Cologne, Germany
Everything No One Ever Wanted, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland
2023
Dear Friends, O-Town House, Los Angeles, USA
2022
Pause: Tobias Spichtig – Die Matratzen, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
2021
Nothing, Freehouse, London
GOOD OK GREAT FANTASTIC PERFECT GRAND THANK YOU, Swiss Institute, New York
2020
Subtitles for Footnotes, Gallery Bernhard, Zurich
Pretty Fine, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
HI IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR HELLO, KALEIDOSCOPE, Spazio Maiocchi, Milan
2019
Love and die, Centre d’art contemporain – la synagogue de Delme, Delme
Fridge & Mind Again, (curated by Samuel Leuenberger), SALTS, Basel
SPRING, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
I’m afraid I don’t know how to explain all this, Museum Folkwang, Essen
2018
Das Böse im Dunkeln, Freehouse, London
Total Hell, Waldo, Rockport
Long Stories, Jan Kaps, Cologne
Fridge and Mind, Malta Contemporary Art, Valetta
2017
Die Matratzen, Georg Kargl, Vienna
Body and Ghost, Malta Contemporary, Valetta
2016
Like Deadlines in Heaven, Gallery Bernhard, Zurich
Die Matratzen, Jan Kaps, Cologne
2015
Daily Business, (in collaboration With Paolo Thorsen-Nagel), LambdaLambdaLambda, Pristina
Backdrops for Primitives, Michael Thibault Gallery, Los Angeles
2014
Sorry I’m Late / Don’t Worry Time Does Not Exist., Gallery Bernhard, Zurich
2013
This Is What Happened In the Jungle., Eleven Rivington, New York
Cyan, Yellow, and Violette, Georg Gatsas – Tobias Mirror, Kunstrayen, Riehen
2012
the Blue, the Red, the Green, the Cuboid and the Pyramid, Ursula Blickle Foundation, Karlsruhe
2011
the Blue, the Red, the Yellow, the White, the Brown, and the Green, A.C. Kupper_modern, Zurich
Selected group exhibitions
2023
Au-delà – Rituals for a new world, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris
2022
Forming Communities: Berliner Wege – 道法柏林, 而游于外 (Dào fǎ bólín, ér yóu yú wài), Kindl Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin
Peeping Tom, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
2021
Forde, Genève
Stitches, Scènes, Corps, Décors | When The Subversive Stitches, Le Commun, Genève
Grand Ménage, Clearing, Paris
Party de Campagne, CAC – La Synagoge de Delme, Delme Pathologically Social, O-Town House, Los Angeles
Hopeless Romantics, Futura, Prague
Shred, The Skateroom, Brussels
2020
Studio Berlin, Boros Collection, Berghain | Panorama Bar | Säule, Berlin
Overtone, The Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw
2019
40,000, A Museum of Curiosity, (curated by Brigitte Franzen), Fellbach Small Sculpture Triennial 2019, Fellbach
2018
Five Million Years, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Ormai, Balice Hertling, Paris
2017
Things in Shape of Things, Galeria Stereo, Warsaw
Okey Dokey, Zum Jülichstübli, Jan Kaps, Cologne
Fade In 2: Ext. Modernist Home – Night, Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Belgrade
Summer Show, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm
Hunger, (curated by Oriane Durand), Dortmunder Kunstverein, Dortmund
2016
Tbilisi 16, Kitchen Hall Zurich, Tbilisi
Parapet / Real Humans, P4s, Los Angeles
I Pledge Allegiance, (curated by KM Temporaer), On Stellar Rays, New York
2015
Infamous Lives, Oracle, Berlin
The Subjects of the Artists, Michael Thibault Gallery, Los Angeles
A Form Is a Social Gatherer, Plymouth Rock, Zurich
2014
Attention Economy, (curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
Elevation 1049, (curated by Olympia Scarry and Neville Wakefield), Gstaad
2013
Celluloid Brushes, Ludlow 38 (Goethe Institute), New York
Sallie Gardner: A Group Exhibition, Michael Thibault Gallery, Los Angeles
2011
Melanchotopia, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam
Selected press
Frieze
19 September 2024
„Tobias Spichtig’s Vampiric Sitters Draw Us In”
By Krzysztof Kosciuczuk
Link
ArtForum
May 2024
“Tobias Spichtig”
By Kito Nedo
Link
Monopol
7 February 2024
„Künstler Tobias Spichtig, Der Geisterbeschwörer“
By Laura Ewert
Link
Baseler Zeitung
6 February 2024
„Die Materialschlacht als eigentlicher Inhalt“
By Simon Baur
Link
Juliet Art Magazine
2 February 2024
„Everything no one ever wanted: in conversation with Tobias Spichtig”
By Enrico Boschi
Link
St. Gallen Tagblatt
18 January 2024
“Tobias Spichtig macht süchtig – Der Basler Totentanz bekommt ein Update“
By Daniele Muscionico
Link
Spike
8 November 2021
“Good Ok Great Fantastic Perfect Grand”
By Jordan Richman
Link