Chris Ware

The retrospective "Chris Ware", developed in close collaboration with the artist, shows the whole richness of the work of this important US-American author and illustrator. Born in Omaha in 1967, Chris Ware published very early in the avant-garde magazine "RAW" by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly. In the early 1990s, he launched his large-scale "Acme Novelty" series, in which he established his most important characters. Chris Ware draws with perfectionist meticulousness and technical precision; his books are narrative and formal works of art in which everything from the typography to the cover comes from a single source. In the exhibition it becomes comprehensible how he arrives at his thoroughly composed image sequences, reminiscent of plans and construction drawings, via searching preliminary sketches. From a wide variety of perspectives and in a unique, concentrated density, the reader learns about human shortcomings, communication difficulties, and disappointments. Particularly impressive is the elaborately produced comic collection "Building Stories" from 2012, which brings together 15 books in a wide variety of formats that have no predetermined order, but are meant to be discovered and connected individually by the readership. It was honored with the Special Jury Prize at the Angoulême Festival in 2013. In addition to his major graphic novels "Jimmy Corrigan" (2000), "Building Stories" (2012) and "Rusty Brown" (2020), Chris Ware works for the press, especially the "New Yorker", and has co-created animated films around his main characters Quimby the Mouse and Rusty Brown. The retrospective shows original works from the most important works of the exceptional artist and objects such as models, sculptures and constructions that complement his stories in the third dimension.


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.