Michel FR
Lis Kocher
Youri Laubscher Gonzalez
Georges Rechberger

Michel FR, the artistic name of Michel Cotting, was born in Fribourg in 1976. Following teacher training and a diploma in graphic design from the School of Design in Biel/Bern, he works as a visual artist, graphic designer and teacher. His paintings and drawings are characterised by offbeat humour, expressive figures, bold colours, fragments of text and large-scale mural and live-painting projects.

At étage 19, Michel FR is presenting the project “Quand je me suis réveillé ce matin…”, in which texts by Christian Schmutz are combined with drypoint engravings on old milk cartons. The work playfully explores linguistic boundaries, visual humour and printed narrative.

Lis Kocher, born in Bern in 1942, lives and works in Magglingen. Since the 1960s, she has been developing a body of work spanning painting, drawing, object art, lithography and books, which combines biographical traces, physical signs, surreal, pop-inspired imagery and questions of visibility and inner constitution.

Lis Kocher brings a distinctive perspective, shaped by history, to the exhibition: works of painting and drawing in which memory, bodily gestures and a poetic sense of self-positioning interplay between figuration and abstraction.

Youri Laubscher Gonzalez, born in 1969 in Biel/Bienne, is a painter and multidisciplinary artist. Trained in graphic design, he now works at the intersection of painting, performance, digital art and projection. His paintings and live performances explore themes ranging from raw gesture and memory to the body, transformation and visual improvisation.

In this exhibition, Youri Laubscher Gonzalez presents a painterly approach that oscillates between expressive gesture, inner landscape and digitally expanded pictorial spaces. He will also be taking part in the interdisciplinary performance as a visual artist at the closing event.

Georges Rechberger was born in Thun in 1961, attended the graphic design course at the School of Design in Biel, and has been working ever since as a painter, graphic designer and illustrator. Following periods spent in Europe and South America, he has lived and worked in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, since 1987. His work encompasses painting, illustration, murals and vividly coloured urban and figurative worlds.

Georges Rechberger brings a Swiss-Brazilian approach to painting and illustration to etage 19. His works combine drawing, colour, observations of the city and a visual energy that lies somewhere between illustration and free painting.