Manuel Stehli Swiss, b. 1988

Manuel Stehli was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1988 and graduated from Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 2014.

In his recent work, Manuel Stehli has been focusing on the life-sized depiction of the human figure, both individually and in groups.  While the situations presented appear rather concrete at first glance, Stehli's paintings refuse a specific placement in space and time.  They don't represent events but rather states, experimental arrangements showing one possibility out of many.

There is a peculiar sense of limbo inherent in these paintings: between their blatant presence on the one hand and their muteness on the other, between the intimacy they suggest and the remoteness within which it is sealed.  Stehli's works are reticent, they don't reach out to the spectator, but rather act as mere presences, be it as counterparts or placeholders, leaving one to fill the silences themselves.