Using photos I had taken in museum exhibitions in Switzerland and Germany, I created new compositions by tracing together still lifes, mainly from France and Holland, onto large sheets.

“Markus Schwander is interested in the benefits a drawing reaps from indirect methods regarding the subject, the drawing technique and – probably the most important motive – regarding the medial superposition. Markus Schwander’s drawing not only manifest a combination of images that stem from superimposed tracings and overlappings, but also the phenomena of concealment, deletion and omission that are always in play.”
Sibylle Omlin

“Markus Schwander guides us through an unusual and very personal gallery with his latest drawings: a virtual collection of fruit still lifes from the 18th to the early 20th century. The drawings are framed in black and hang in a strict order in Basel's Wuethrich Gallery. Yet the lightness of the blue mesh of lines in the drawings dispels their apparent orderliness.
Suspended between presence and disappearance, we encounter alienated paintings by Cézanne, Chardin or Largillière. If the originals tantalized the senses with their presentations of fruits, draped curtains, exquisite porcelain bowls or ordinary water jugs, their drawn replicas bear only the mere memory of this ‘lust of the eyes,’ distilled in fine blue lines. The occasion for these drawings was the idea to bring still lifes by French painters from Swiss collections back to France, where Schwander copied them onto the walls of a Paris art gallery. The series stages an encounter with these still lifes on paper and at the same time deals with the genre and the object character of the painting.”
Martina Papiro

9 Sibylle Omlin, Wunderblock in: Abdruck - On Markus Schwander‘s Objects and Drawings, Revolver, 2004