From 1980 on: exhibitions, productions and art projects in Switzerland and abroad.

Studios in Switzerland: Ufhusen, Eppenwil, Sarnen, Giswil, in Italy: Pietralata (Siena) and in Ukraine: Kyiv, Odessa. Besides painting, objects, art in public spaces and interdisciplinary art projects, since 1997 video work.

Sufficient kilometres lie between Switzerland and Ukraine to allow for passage from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the intimate to the alien. By increasing the intimacy of the foreign,the familiar becomes alien.

In Ukraine Hugo Schaer worked not with brought material, but with that which he found on – site. The emblemsand symbols, the outlines of indigenous tools, the wood – carved Cyrillic letters used for the linocuts of the Kiev journal – they are found items, as are the paints, the paper and even the linoleum which formerly lay on the floor of a Kiev kitchen.
Solitary symbols of Hugo Schaer’s imagery speak of the encounter between alien and familiar, inserting themselves into the new and as yet unaccustomed.

Entirely created out of the alien are the tile pictures on the theatre posters and canvas. The pattern of coulourful tiles is ubiquitous in the streets of Kiev, on the walls of buildings and city squares, in alleys and subway shafts.

The gaze upon the ground, at the diverse cast iron manhole covers leading from the surface of the Kiev streets to the underground below, is the starting point for the book project “ Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”, realized jointly with the writer Andrej Kurkov, who was born 1961 in St. Petersburg. Kurkov, who has lived in Kiev since his childhood, and who possesses a keen eye not only for the comedy inherent in an inadequate situation but also for the conditions and grievances of a newly – independent society, was inspired by Hugo Schaer’s anhole cover photos to write a  witty and exposing story of the Kiev underground.