STABILA X RENE SULZER: Manual expertise paired with artistic creativity
A true pro in his field, the Karlsruhe-based artist Rene Sulzer developed the new Be a True Pro design, demonstrating that symmetry, accuracy and straight lines also play a key role for him as an artist.
Rene is a child of the 80s, where children were still outside skating and not sitting for hours in front of video-game consoles or computers. Observing, experiencing and trying things out – already during his school days, Rene spent a lot of his free time at the skatepark experimenting with spray cans. “I followed my parents’ advice and first learnt a respectable profession”, he says with a grin. As a painter and varnisher, he used the 3-year vocational training period to delve into his interest in design and it’s no surprise that he graduated with distinction. “After completing my training, I decided one day to set up as a freelancer and have been combining my manual expertise and creativity ever since.”


Rene has been working as a freelance artist for more than 15 years. But he does not limit his skills to painting alone – on the contrary, there are many different tasks that he tackles when working on a project. For the STABILA video, for example, he burned the midnight oil trying to find the right music. “I don’t think I fit a specific mould. I don’t like to limit myself. Everything I touch falls under one big category: aesthetics!” Rene combines many different styles such as graffiti, painting and graphic design in his work, all of which express the artist’s predilection for symmetry and straight lines. He even carries a STABILA spirit level with him to work on walls – a fact which clearly underlines his drive for accuracy. “In the past few years, my art has become bolder, but also more streamlined. So of course, it’s very easy to spot if something is not straight.”
“There’s nothing wrong with exploring your own creativity from an early age.”
(Rene Sulzer)
In general, Rene is very focused on his environment and local conditions. The first time he visited STABILA and we were looking at locations to shoot the video, he kept on pulling out his mobile phone to capture special moments on his camera. In fact, he could probably put together his own exhibition from that collection alone. “I am a mirror of my own environment,” Rene tells me the next time we meet in Annweiler after he finished the project.
He was really impressed by STABILA’s production and administrative premises. “Based on your location, it was really easy to see how much you value tradition in the STABILA brand. In addition to your corporate identity and design, I thought it was important to convey this tradition on the canvases and in the film. I reinterpreted STABILA’s brand values as well as the colours and shapes of your logo in my art,” explains Rene. “Your spirit levels really inspired my designs. A spirit level lets you measure in two planes – either horizontally or vertically. That’s why I hung the black canvases on the walls. Black stands for the solid and stable profile. I painted the yellow canvases while they were lying on the ground. Yellow symbolises the liquid substance in the vials. These two components represent the simple yet ingenious function of a spirit level.”
What made the project even more exciting is that Rene’s work with STABILA is being used for the launch of this year’s “Ruler for Children” fundraising campaign. Rene has placed social projects at the centre of his work in the past as well and working together with schoolchildren and young people holds a special place in his heart: “Working and supporting young people has always been very important to me. Not everyone has to play football. I want to show them that there are other options out there. There’s nothing wrong with exploring your own creativity from an early age.”

RS / 2019 / Karlsruhe

Live painting / 2020 / Alter Schlachthof / Karlsruhe
STABILA “Ruler for Children” campaign
Measure up to a good cause
Actively support a good cause with the “Ruler for Children” campaign! For every rule that is posted on Instagram with the hashtag #rulerforchildren between 1 April and 1 November 2020, STABILA will donate 5 euros to Sterntaler children’s hospice in Dudenhofen, Germany.
More information about the campaign can be found here.