The Cartoonmuseum Basel is dedicating a part of the exhibition on comic pioneer Winsor McCay (1869–1934) to the Swiss illustrator Daniel Bosshart (*1971). Both artists show a keen interest in dissecting processes of transformation and displaying them in individual images. The exhibition coincides with the publication of Bosshart’s album “Metamorphosis”, the last book of a comic trilogy whose first two volumes, “Geteilter Traum” (Divided Dream) and “Alberto”, aroused great interest. For the very first volume “Geteilter Traum”, the artist won the “Max und Moritz” prize for the best German-language comic publication at the Erlangen International Comic Salon. Daniel Bosshart’s imaginative storylines are evocative of film. He uses neither speech bubbles nor onomatopoeia, but the images, with their meticulously drawn transformations of objects and spaces, dimensional leaps, mirroring and symbolism, demonstrate how much can be said without words. Bosshart’s stories, which are partly autobiographic, wind their way through different levels of the protagonists’ consciousness, arising from memories, dreams and fantasies. Everyday life and several parallel worlds intertwine to form a sensuous web of narratives overflowing with magic and life.
Curator: Anette Gehrig