Tracer in English means a tool for tracing, the person tracing, and also the trace. Tracer also refers to the professions of graphic artist or technical draughtsman. The series of drawings called Tracer (2021/22) was done for the publication of the same name. Using graphite on A3 sheets of paper Mathis Pfäffli has created a kind of picture story in which real buildings encounter fictive spaces; futuristic architecture meets hybrid landscapes with leafless trees and technoid objects. They blend to form fantastic and partly uncanny worlds following a logic of their own.

The publication Tracer contains the complete series of drawings called Tracer, a survey of Pfäffli’s artistic work, with texts by Chantal Kaufmann, Julia Moritz, Sophia Roxane Rohwetter, and Arnaud Wohlhauser.

Tracer is published in conjunction with the exhibition “Floor is Lava” by Mathis Pfäffli at Kunstmuseum Luzern (from 2 July to 4 September 2022).

Texts by: Chantal Kaufmann, Julia Moritz, Sophia Roxane Rohwetter, Arnaud Wohlhauser

Editor: Kunstmuseum Luzern

Author: Mathis Pfäffli

Concept: Mathis Pfäffli, Pascal Storz

Book design by Pascal Storz.