The dark sides, the abyss and other signs of life. A portrait of the painter Marcel Reich By Christian Schirmer It is an impressive kaleidoscope of human emotions presenting itself in the works of the artist Marcel Reich. Pictures and drawings of people are at the center of his creations Ð telling unobtrusive stories, despite their brute picture language. The dark sides of our existence are to the fore of Marcel Reich's representations. Powerful lines, triggered by wrath, anger, threat, dolefulness, violence and resignation, are turned into images - demonic and abysmal notions start closing in. As it may seem. Yet, the first, bleak impression that Reich's work is likely to create, does not live up to the negative aspects of this supposition. The reason for this can be found in the technique and composition of the pictures, which do not display any aggression. It is an attempt to put into superior perspective what is commonly considered to be bad and turn it into something acceptable to the eye of the beholder. Bad is not just bad, and evil is not just threatening. Denial is being transformed into melancholy, sometimes even into silence. Marcel Reich knows his trade. Whether he uses chalk, charcoal or brush, his strokes are always airy, precise, often even dance-like - but never random. Especially in those pictures, where Reich deviates from clearly figurative representations, his drawing ability, his virtuosity and dynamism become particularly evident. Here, vigorous energy is released by reducing and omitting - at this stage there is no need for any further elaboration. Marcel Reich was born in Chur in the year 1970 and grew up in the Swiss village of Trin, the Grisons. After his study as a graphic artist in Chur and Zurich, he was working as a freelance artist and illustrator for four years. His next step was a short intermezzo as a Junior Art Director with a large advertising agency in Zurich. He has been living in Zurich and working there again as a freelance artist for nearly ten years now. In the year 1991, he presented his pieces of art within the framework of the Comic Artists from the Grisons exhibition at the Jugendhaus in Chur, next to other artists, such as H. R. Giger, Gaspare O. Melcher and Andrea Caprez. Reich's picutres were shown in two single exhibitions at the Planaterra Gallery in Chur in 1993 and a great number of his paintings and drawings were displayed at the Eisenwerk in Frauenfeld in March 1996. The same year, in September, he participated in the young artists' group exhibition at the Landis & Gyr Shedhalle in Zug, Switzerland. Copyright © Marcel Reich