The first large-scale exhibition of Urs Lüthi’s paintings was clear proof that the artist has not been untrue tohimself in switching from photography to painting. Quite the contrary. Lüthi’s overriding theme—in brief, our essential helplessness in reconciling the triviality of our lives and the sublimity of our dreams—has found truer expression in his paintings. The discrete images in his earlier photographic sequences, in which he exposed the comedy and tragedy of everyday events, are layered one upon the other in the paintings, creating a single, multidimensional image. Lüthi’s method of