Otto Urwyler

Otto Urwyler was born in Olten, Switzerland, in 1954.

From 1977-79 he completed his education as a sculptor with Johannes Burla at the School of Applied Arts in Basel, Switzerland.

In 1983 he received a grant from the city of Basel to study Fine Arts.

From 1983 to 1985 he studied at the Academy of Art in D¸sseldorf and at the School of Art in Berlin.

From 1990-95 he attended the course in etching with Dadi Wirz, once again at the School of Applied Arts in Basel.

”Habit is a second nature which cancels the first. But what is nature? Why shouldn’t habit be natural? I’m afraid that this nature is in itself only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.î Blaise Pascal.

Otto Urwyler works with fields. When creating his art he moves in those morphic fields which are responsible for the processes of formation. The American biochemist Rupert Sheldrak in his book ”The Presence of the Pastî (1988) investigated for the first time the processes of formation. He writes: ”Morphic fields are – just as the known fields in physics – non-material energy zones expanding in space and continuing in time. They are within the surroundings and of the system which they organize. When such an organized system ceases to exist, for example when an atom is split, a snowflake melts, an animal dies, then the organized field disappears from the place where the system existed. In another sense, however, the morphic fields do not disappear. They are potential organization patterns and can become concrete once again at another time and place, if the physical conditions are given. When they manifest themselves once more they contain a memory of their earlier physical existence. I call the process in which the past becomes the presence within a morphic field ”morphicî resonance. The concept of morphic resonance contains a transferring of formative causal influences through time and space. The memory content of a morphic field is cumulative and this is why all things assume more and more the character of the habitual through repetition. When this process of repetition has taken place billions of years, such as is the case with atoms and most molecules and crystals, then the peculiar characteristic of these entities has turned into a profound habit that practically becomes its immutable and even eternal nature. All this is in opposition to the orthodox theories of our time. Modern physics, chemistry or biology does not know what morphic resonance is; it is assumed that the fields of physics are subject to eternal natural laws. On the other hand, morphic fields form themselves in time and space under the influence of what actually happens in the world. They can only be contemplated in the context of an evolutionary consciousness, something we cannot say about the fields of physics – or have not been able to say until recently.