Jason McCoy Gallery is pleased to present a collaboration between the Swiss artists Annelies Strba and Adrian Schiess. The project, which was originally sparked by an exhibition at the Museum Langmatt in Baden, Switzerland, in 2011, remains ongoing.

“Collaboration” features a series of works on paper that involve signature photographs by Strba, a pioneer of digital manipulated photography and film, that have been altered and obscured by the gestural expressions of Schiess, a renowned abstract painter. The subjects, which range from still lives to landscapes and figurative abstractions, can be easily recognizable as well as dramatically veiled and hard to decipher. This creates a distinct rhythm when observing a selection of these works side-by-side. In some cases, the imagery of the underlying photograph remains dominant; in others, paint has taken over completely. It is the give-and-take evoked in this unusual fusion of two separate mediums and of two artist’s highly individualistic visions that provides this body of work with a unique sense of dynamism. These works are characterized by both formal tension and a sense of mystique.

Annelies Strba was born in Zug in 1947. Her work has been featured in many international gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; the European Museum of Photography, Paris; the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, among many others. Jason McCoy Gallery has been Annelies Strba’s exclusive US representative since 2005.

Adrian Schiess was born in Zurich in 1959. His individual works have been featured at the Musée d’Art Moderne, St. Etienne; Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; Städtiche Galerie Nordhorn; Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Kunsthaus Gredenz; Venice Biennale, Chiesa San Staë, Documenta IX, among others. This will be Adrian Schiess’ first project with the gallery.