Mortadella

For more than a year, the Zurich artist Christoph Hänsli has been working on a special painting project. Meticulously, he paints and works his way through a mortadella sliced into 166 pieces, painting each slice from the front and the back. In the end, there are 332 images. Essentially, that says it all. However, it does not convey that within this world of sausage slices, a hypnotic universe unfolds, featuring meditative mortadella mandalas and slowly changing, delicate pink constellations. It is an ontological approach to the painterly essence of a sausage. The renowned British art critic John Berger has written an illuminating text exclusively about Hänsli's work for 'Mortadella' for the second time.