URS LÜTHI
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels
November 12, 1975 – January 8, 1976
Opening: November 10, 19h
Original invitation for Urs Lüthi's 1975 solo exhibition at Galerie Isy Brachot, a key moment in the development of self-performance and gender-fluid identity in postwar European art. The invitation is a bifolded card with two loose inserts, measuring 29.7 × 21.0 cm unfolded, and features stark black-and-white photographs of the artist staging his own body — sometimes disguised, sometimes vulnerable, always deliberately composed.
Emerging from the 1970s conceptual wave, Lüthi's work blended performance, photography, and personal mythology. He rejected the neutral stance of much conceptual art in favour of something more intimate, melancholic, and theatrical. The images shown here — posed, exposed, and occasionally erased — point to early preoccupations with the self as both object and illusion.
This exhibition came at a time when Lüthi was establishing his visual lexicon: the reclining body, the play with androgyny, the subtle references to artifice and autobiography. Surviving ephemera from this period is exceptionally scarce, and this invitation offers both historical significance and stark formal beauty.
