Exhibition Dark comic worlds by Thomas Ott at the Cartoonmuseum Basel
Comic artist Thomas Ott scratches the surface of everyday life in the truest sense of the word, delving into dark and macabre depths. From Saturday, the Cartoonmuseum Basel is presenting a retrospective of original works by the Zurich cartoonist, filmmaker and musician.
20.03.2025, 10:08
SDA
One series of pictures shows the last moments of a car driver steering his vehicle over the crash barrier at night and out into what is probably a fatal abyss. In another drawing, we are confronted with the scene of an apparent murder. Or you see a young schoolboy on his way into a sinister and gloomy ravine.
Thomas Ott is not a feel-good illustrator, not an illustrator of subtle humor. His sarcastic works, all in black and white, the textless graphic novels lead us into the abysses of human existence, into macabre nightmare worlds that, if not explicitly depicted, give an irrefutable sense of horror.
The themes of the artist, who was born in Zurich in 1966 and lives in Basel, are death, black and white, fate, bad luck, wrong turns, dead ends and downfall, as he once said in a newspaper interview. His sources of inspiration include B-movies, film noir and the legendary "shock suspense stories" of the American EC Comics from the 1940s and 1950s.
With his graphic novels, his drawings for various newspapers and magazines and his work for renowned clients such as the Louis Vuitton Collection in Paris, Ott has become internationally renowned as an exceptional artist.
Ott scratches out his pictures
What is special about Ott's work is not only the content, but also the technique of scraping. The drawings are scratched out of the darkness of a cardboard covered with black ink using a cutter or a scalpel as a drawing pen. This also technically emphasizes the darkness of his work.
The Cartoonmuseum Basel is now presenting what the museum describes as the first major retrospective of the multi-award-winning artist's work. On display are around 50 original works - including previously unpublished loans from private collections - as well as films and a walk-in installation. The exhibition is on display until June 22.
