Fifty large-scale coloured pencil drawings telling the story of the destruction of Dieselbrugg.
When someone as peaceful as Emanuel Halpern (Zurich, 1948) draws an apocalypse, things must be pretty bad with the world. His fifty large-scale coloured pencil drawings telling the story of the destruction of Dieselbrugg confirm this prediction. This is his comic version of Dürrenmatt's valley of confusion. Reality, which is usually slouching towards tragedy, can be described only by comic means. Both talented storytellers subscribe to this truism. They give us solid citizens with image and text collages that are almost excessively artistic and hypertrophic. But the images underline the fact that this is the only way that we can tackle and escape from the mess.
In the Dieselbrugg Apocalypse, Halpern manages to move between pilgrimage and the misery of refugees with the sure-footedness of a somnambulist. "You can't really be as dozy as that" he seems to be muttering. "Come into my yurt In here you will hear peace bells ringing,
you'll see bathing towels fluttering. This is Dieselbrugg."
Guido Magnaguagno
Emanuel Halpern (born 1948 in Zurich) is a Zurich-based Swiss artist. He appeared in Reto Andrea Savoldelli's modern fairy-tale movie Stella da Falla (1971) and has taught at Zurich's F+F School for Art and Media Design.
