Dennis Hollingsworth

Now, I'm really back.

Jet lag. The last couple of days have been verrrry sloooow. I've got much to assimilate in terms of what I've just experienced since the beginning of the month. I've got a pile of paperwork (files tax, art and otherwise) and the tasks required to get ready for the next brace of work in the studio. There's also next years' shows that I have to give careful consideration.

First things first: many thanks to Mark M?ller, who is and was very delightful, intelligent, considerate, attentive, insightful... a wonderful host for my work in Z?rich. This side view of him doesn't do enough justice to his visage, I'm still pretty awkward as a travel photographer... as you will soon see.

I arrived at Z?rich shortly before seven in the morning. The temperature was in the forties and the sky was overcast. Transit from the airport was easy as the train station was incorporated into the airport (as it should be in all major cities, DO YOU READ ME, LOS ANGELES?) and finding Mark's gallery was a delight since it was a short walk away from the main trainstation (Hauptbanhof).


This is the front of the building where Mark's gallery is located. To find the front door, you've got to go down the rabbbit hole...

Here's the sign...

And here's the door.

A note on the rabbit hole: later that morning, I walked around Z?rich (I missed Mark who had come to the gallery early that morning to greet me... I walked the city in a big spiral, starting with what is known to them as a "rough" street (Lang Strasse, which is tame as urban roughness goes, nightclubs, sex shops and head shops), then crossing the river to the historical pedestrian boutique, bar and nightclub street (Niederdorf Strasse), then crossing the Quai Br?cke at the mouth of the See Lake to return to the gallery via Bahnhof Strasse, the corollary to Beverly Hills in LA. All of this is to say that compared to other possible locations of urban sites in Z?rich, Mark has sited his place very well: tucked beneath (literally) the edge of the heart of the tony part of town. Edgy yet upscale and finally edgy. And now, the gallery:

You will be seeing Christine Streuli's show.

Christine is a young Swiss painter, just out of school and burning with that magic that few are blessed with as she has already been to New York, Cairo and has had a few paintings incorporated into local museum collections.

As you can see, she has an eclectic pallette, sampling from many techniques and many influences. Talking to her, I found she thinks poetically, correllating symbolism to technique from canvas to canvas.