Week

End

Vivian Suter (*1949), born in Argentina, who lives and works in Guatemala, has been creating a singular oeuvre for over four decades.

In “Vivian Suter”, a documentary publication accompanying Suter’s exhibition during the 2023 edition of Week-End Fest XII, we gain an insight into her idiomatic position which is characterised not only by gestural and abstract painting, but above all by the creative symbiosis (or co-authorship) with nature, which affects and refines her work. Since tropical storm Stan hit her Guatemalan residence on Lake Atitlán in 2005, destroying a number of paintings, she has allowed Mother Earth to intervene: mud, plants, spores, and particularly the clear signs of weathering can be found in the paintings today.

Suter’s work here not only evokes colour field painting and abstract expressionism, but also shows her gestures and a sense of intuitiveness. Through the weathering process, the canvases lose colour density with the interventions of wind, mist and general hybridity, but gain depth and life.