Stefan à Wengen – The Power of Love

August 23, 2024 until January 26, 2025
Vernissage: Friday, 23rd August 2024 at 7 p.m.

As a child, Stefan à Wengen regularly went to Basel Zoo with his parents. There he experienced one of those rare moments that stay with him forever and have a lifelong impact: His gaze met that of a rhinoceros, and this caused something to resonate that flashed a deep connection between the two across species boundaries. Commenting on such moments of recognition, the writer and art critic John Berger wrote: "The eyes of an animal, when looking at a human being, are alert and watchful. The same animal will probably look at other animals in the same way. No special gaze is reserved for humans. But no species other than humans will perceive the animal's gaze as familiar. Other animals are captivated by the gaze. Man, however, by returning the gaze, becomes aware of himself."¹
 
Decades later, the time was ripe to revive this moment, to paint the rhinoceros in all its significance for him as a human being and as an artist on large formats (five acrylic paintings measuring 180 x 260 cm to date). Stefan à Wengen had found the form to simultaneously express strength and stoicism, pride and dependence, exoticism and familiarity. The key is empathy and emotion, which he must be able to bring to a subject, from the first encounter through the studies, which can drag on, to the painting. In memory of the emotional shock he felt at that childhood moment, he calls the rhinos "The Power of Love". As is usual for him, he always researches anew before allowing himself to realize another version.
 
One of the many models he used was the famous wood engraving "Rhinocerus" (1515) by Albrecht Dürer, which he made from written reports by an eyewitness without ever having seen one. In 1515, a rhinoceros was a spectacular affair that even drew the attention of kings, as Europe had not seen a rhinoceros since the fall of the Roman Empire. A rhinoceros bull had been sent from Goa to the court of Manuel I of Portugal and kept in the menagerie for a while before being passed on to Pope Leo X, the Medici pope with a penchant for the exotic. On the sea voyage to Rome, the ship carrying the rhinoceros sank off La Spezia.² Situated on a shaded surface, the painter presents the animal filling the picture against an empty background from the side, looking to the left. It stands there all alone, its outward appearance a composite of rhinoceros depictions from art history, but its expression inspired by à Wengen's memory. Although animals appear quite frequently in à Wengen's works, one hardly ever encounters them in their natural environment.

Roswitha Schild

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¹ Warum sehen wir Tiere an? In: John Berger; Das Leben der Bilder oder die Kunst des Sehens; Berlin, 2022, p. 15.
² Cf. in this regard: Philip Hoare, Albrecht Dürer und der Wal. Wie die Kunst die Welt erschaffen hat; Stuttgart, 2023; p. 38-44.


Figure:
Stefan à Wengen, The Power of Love
2013, acrylic on linen, 180 x 260 cm