Let’s Get Lit Renggli & Wachholz

Matchboxes are a dying relic from a time when smoking in public and especially in cafes, restaurants, and bars was still unrestricted and consequently much more widespread than it is today.

The ephemeral matchbox very quickly developed into a form of free souvenir that, charged with individual memory, still connects the owner years later with the personal visit experience coupled to space and time. Over the decades, a discipline related to the collection of matchboxes developed in the form of phillumeny.

This background opens up both a starting point and a frame of reference for the series of works on view in which Thomas Wachholz deals with the cultural artifact of the matchbox on both a conceptual and painterly level.

In the early phase of the series, the artist focused primarily on participatory and processual elements. For several years, however, painting itself has become increasingly important. Starting from his matchbox collection, the artist deals with the found pictorial and color worlds as well as their compositions. In doing so, he develops them further to a point where they become independent of the original designs and turn into independent painterly subjects. A new, abstract repertoire of colors and forms emerges in the process, which the artist repeatedly samples and condenses into new compositions.