An oversized book model is placed on a stage with grey artificial flowers. From its painted front page the artist looks at us in a thoughtful pose. The writing “Hobby und Wahrheit” (Hobby and Truth) on the spine of the book promises both pleasure and profound findings.
The setting described is a stage for a performance and at the same time an autonomous sculpture and advertising campaign for the publication of the same name. The simultaneity of different levels of meaning and approaches is as characteristic of Niklaus Rüegg’s work as his preoccupation with the book. It is therefore obvious that the present publication provides an insight into the artist's oeuvre and at the same time, through the consistently unorthodox handling of the archival material accumulated over the last ten years, becomes an artist’s book, an autonomous work.
The publication “Hobby und Wahrheit” was created in close collaboration between the artist, the publisher and the designer. On more than seven hundred small-format book pages, uncommented visual material from the artist’s data archive is spread out with a great deal of calculation and no less chance and arranged according to a modular grid. Reference illustrations meet sketches, drawings are placed next to illustrations of works and documentary photographs, and from time to time texts or text fragments appear.