Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents the first solo exhibition of the Chilean born artist Cristóbal Lehyt in Europe. Cristóbal Lehyt uses drawings, photography and installation for his works and has participated in important exhibitions in the last years in the US and South America. In his exhibition in Stuttgart, Cristóbal Lehyt will present the ongoing project “El Norte” (The North) and new works which will be produced specifically for the exhibition, among them a series of portraits from people of Stuttgart and a subjective model of the city.

The works of Cristóbal Lehyt deal with the question of how personal and subjective feelings are interconnected with cultural influences, but also projections and expectations. His series “El Norte” shows images of the big desert in Northern Chile as well as found images, like re-photographed newspapers, that the artist brings into association with the series. The arid landscape, which dominates a third of Chile’s topography, is as fascinating as it is hostile and can be read like a symbol of the ambivalent socio-political development of South America. Even though Cristóbal Lehyt proceeds with an obvious interest in these political and social conflicts in mind, his works resist a narrative, documentary reading.

For the exhibition in Stuttgart, Cristóbal Lehyt will produce a series of large-scale portraits of the citizens of Stuttgart, which approach the question of subjectivity through the practice of drawing.

For the exhibition, a catalogue will be published with texts by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sabeth Buchmann and Javier Tellez at JRP-Ringier, Zurich.

The exhibition is kindly supported by KulturAllianzen.