Tobias Gutmann – Zürich, Switzerland, +41 79 689 69 27, hello@tobiasgutmann.com, Instagram

At the heart of Tobias Gutmann's artistic practice lies the creation and investigation of encounters – between people, cultures, and environments, but also between what we perceive on the outside and what we feel on the inside. With his Face-o-mat performance, he portrays people by expressing their characteristics and personal traits through abstract drawings. Rather than providing a photorealistic depiction, he aims to capture the sound of a person. Gutmann's drawings reflect experiences, thoughts, memories, happenings, beliefs. They also reflect the artist’s own unique approach to figure and form, which oscillates between the abstract and the pictorial, between the known and the unknown. Sai Bot is Tobias Gutmann’s digital artist twin. In a poetic gesture, he has taught an AI to draw portraits, that transmit the Face-o-mat DNA and process ten years of his experience. The ever-growing archive of his drawings has developed its own language and meaning, dissolving into multiple narratives in various mediums, such as installations, workshops or publications.

«I can do that too», says the AI – Marlene Wenger
Tobias Gutmann’s portraits are not photorealistic, but freer, more abstract interpretations of the face in its own formal language. […] With the portrait, you become part of a conglomerate of images that belong together, you become part of the Face-o-mat project.

The Sound of a Person – Marcel Henry
Die Zeichnung ist »nur« das Zeugnis der Begegnung und sie sagt etwas aus über den Charakter und die Qualität der Begebenheit. Es kann sein, dass eine Stunde später ein ganz anderes Bild herauskäme. Was unter seiner Hand entsteht, ist immer eine Momentaufnahme.

Exhibition text – Barbara Seiler at schwarzescafé / Löwenbräu Kunst, Zürich
Tobias Gutmann has always ventured out of the comfort zone of the artist studio and searched for a dialogue with people and his surroundings.

Publications

Press

Ming Pao 明報, 2017

MMag Taiwan, 2014

Kompliment, 2015

The Art Newspaper, 2014

«I can do that too», says the AI – Marlene Wenger
Tobias Gutmann’s portraits are not photorealistic, but freer, more abstract interpretations of the face in its own formal language. […] With the portrait, you become part of a conglomerate of images that belong together, you become part of the Face-o-mat project.

The Sound of a Person – Marcel Henry
Die Zeichnung ist »nur« das Zeugnis der Begegnung und sie sagt etwas aus über den Charakter und die Qualität der Begebenheit. Es kann sein, dass eine Stunde später ein ganz anderes Bild herauskäme. Was unter seiner Hand entsteht, ist immer eine Momentaufnahme.

Exhibition text – Barbara Seiler at schwarzescafé / Löwenbräu Kunst, Zürich
Tobias Gutmann has always ventured out of the comfort zone of the artist studio and searched for a dialogue with people and his surroundings.

Publications

Press