Tobias Spichtig

"For Spichtig, painting, like music, begins not with thinking, but with a pulse—something sensed or intuited before it becomes visible. The studio, like a music studio, is not a space of control but of vulnerability, for allowing something through. “First dreaming, then painting,” he says, “and maybe later thinking.” This reversal of logic—in which emotion precedes form, and form precedes interpretation—is central to the experience of his work. The point isn’t to understand the world, but to conjure a version of it where sensation comes before sense, where the painting is the future because it hasn’t fully arrived yet."

Samuel Staples

Galerie Peter Kilchmann Zurich/Paris is pleased to announce the representation of artist Tobias Spichtig.

His first solo exhibition will take place on the 13th of June 2025 at 6 pm in our gallery at Zahnradstrasse 21, Zurich.

Spichtig's practice spans painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Based between Berlin and Zurich, the artist creates emotionally charged, visually haunting works that draw from subcultural iconography, pop ephemera, and memories of feelings.

His paintings often depict elongated, spectral figures—half-idol, half-ghost—rendered in sharp, reduced lines and immersed in a visual atmosphere that hovers between mysticism, dislocation, and adoration.

Merging goth aesthetics, sacred references, and a distinct art-historical sensibility, Spichtig's work challenges conventions of portraiture and identity. His gaze—whether turned toward friends, collaborators, or cultural icons—remains unwavering, suspended between fascination and detachment.

Spichtig sees materials not just for what they are, but for what they can become—a perspective he calls material spiritualism. This idea runs through his use of everyday objects like sunglasses, which recur in his earlier work. Removed from their usual context, these items take on new roles: they become markers of identity, tools of concealment, or icons of desire. In doing so, Spichtig reflects on how ordinary things absorb cultural meaning—blurring the line between the personal and the symbolic, between mass culture and individual emotion.

For his sculptures, the artist uses second-hand clothing, often from friends, which he immerses in resin and occasionally coats with nickel. These figure appear post-human, puppet-like, evoking an eerie stillness. The form remains anonymous and void-like—typical of Spichtig’s figures that serve more as symbols of presence than actual individuals. The use of clothing and boots points to his recurring use of fashion as a sculptural language, where the absent body becomes the main protagonist, never soulless but devoid of flesh.

Spichtig’s sculptural approach recalls a certain existentialist quality like the delicate and emaciated works of Alberto Giacometti, though unlike Giacometti they do not appear as distant walkers but instead as radical present ghosts.

Tobias Spichtig (b. 1982 in Lucerne, Switzerland) lives and works between Berlin and Zurich. He studied at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK). The artist has had the opportunity to showcase his works in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Solo exhibitions include, among others, recently Everything No One Ever Wanted at Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland and It's Beautiful When the Spirits Arrive at Tao Art Space, Taipei, both in 2024, Die Matratzen exhibited at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany in 2022, Good OK Great Fantastic Perfect Grand Thank You at the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York, US in 2021, Hi is just another word for hello at Spazio Maiocchi by Kaleidoscope, Milan, Italy in 2020, as well as I'm afraid I don't know how to explain all this at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany in 2019. Tobias Spichtig participated in various group shows such as “Studio Berlin - cooperation between Boros and Berghain”, Berghain, Berlin, Germany in 2020, “Party de Campagne” at CAC - La Synagogue de Delme, Delme, Germany in 2021, as well as the show “Au-delà - Rituals for a new world” at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, France in 2023. A selection of works was also included already in the group exhibition “Shifting” at Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich earlier this year.
Portrait by: Martin Müller.

Download Artist's Biography