Exhibitions featuring international heavyweights like Louise Bourgeois and Isa Genzken are on view in St. Moritz, Zuoz, and Ardez&nbsp;

Brit Barton

Gallery programs are enlivening Switzerland’s Engadin valley this winter

In the Swiss canton of Graubünden, the picturesque Engadin valley has long served as an artistic and inspirational location marked by traditional architecture and warm atmospheres. ‘The region has always been a magnet for writers, philosophers, and artists, inspired by its surrounding natural beauty,’&nbsp;<w>notes Cristina Bechtler, founder the Engadin Art Talks, a platform for discussions held annually in Zuoz.</w>
Renowned as an epicenter of Alpine tourism, the area is also home to the meditative Segantini Museum, the prestigious Muzeum Susch, and public artworks by the likes of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7339/James-Turrell" target="_blank">James Turrell</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6778/Lawrence-Weiner" target="_blank">Lawrence Weiner</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8273/Tadashi-Kawamata" target="_blank">Tadashi Kawamata</a> – as well as an influx of residents who have arrived throughout the last decade. A number of contemporary galleries have also staked their claims through exhibiting works by international artists in both intimate and daring spaces. Across the three towns of St. Moritz, Zuoz, and Ardez, five exhibitions and one installation attest to the fact that contemporary art in rural landscapes is a point of pride this winter.

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Welcome Initiated by Serpentine Galleries and realized by the city of St. Moritz with the support of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1801/von-Bartha" target="_blank">von Bartha</a>&nbsp;gallery and the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation Through April 30, 2023
For one of the first public artworks in town, the city of St. Moritz commissioned US-born, Swiss-beloved artist Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, who installed her new piece, Welcome (2022), last November. After spending her formative years learning graphic design in Basel in the 1950s, Stauffacher Solomon became known for her ‘supergraphics’, which integrate architecture with graphic design, throughout the 1960s and 70s. At almost four meters high and 29 meters wide, Welcome is a monumental installation comprised of steel panels in the artist’s self-created alphabet and typeface, known as the ‘BSS alphabet’. The collaborative effort, first ideated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, was a years-long process, ultimately realized on the wall that separates the train station from Lake St. Moritz, serving as a distinct entry point to and reflection of the city beyond.

Isa Genzken, ‘Inside and Out’ <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1153/Hauser-Wirth" target="_blank">Hauser & Wirth</a>, St. Moritz Through February 4, 2023

German artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6929/Isa-Genzken" target="_blank">Isa Genzken</a> is arguably one of the most critical and influential artists in contemporary art, having worked with media spanning sculpture, photography, installation, film, drawing, and painting since the mid-1970s. This exhibition’s contemplative approach to her practice creates an intimate and nuanced experience that can’t easily be replicated in a larger institutional survey. As the title suggests, poetic interpretations of interiority run throughout the works on view, which hint at the humanity behind the built environment. Specifically,&nbsp;three points of entry <w>to the concept are encountered: early sculptural work of exposed concrete; two-dimensional ‘social facades’ that use materials inherent to urban fabrics, like metal foil or adhesive construction tape, as metaphor; and colorful assemblage wall works that incorporate autobiographical notations. Exhibiting these works alongside one another establishes a delicate choreography that questions the heaviness of quotidian materiality and the oscillation between confronting and embracing modernist architecture. </w>

Petra Wunderlich, ‘Zuoz’ <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1551/Galerie-Tschudi" target="_blank">Gallery Tschudi</a>, Zuoz Through March 18, 2023
German photographer Petra Wunderlich applies a refined and didactic approach to making stoic, black-and-white images, which, in this show, carefully examine the architectural facades found throughout the quaint and romantic village of Zuoz. Wunderlich studied with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/44151/Bernd-and-Hilla-Becher" target="_blank">Bernd and Hilla Becher</a> at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and became part of the generation of students known as the Düsseldorf School of Photography. Today, she maintains the Düsseldorf School’s tradition of rigorous documentation through closely cropped photographs that lend a distant but discrete eye to the subject of each work. Her objective stance and the serialization of the photographs embrace the stark subject matter in style and content, reinforcing the architectural geometries that dot the landscape – as well as the mysterious absence of its inhabitants.

‘Leading and Emerging Women Artists’ Galerie Karsten Greve, St. Moritz Through February 11, 2023

A sweeping testament to female artists,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1149/Galerie-Karsten-Greve" target="_blank">Galerie Karsten Greve</a>’s group exhibition grounds itself in a range of works by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6938/Louise-Bourgeois" target="_blank">Louise Bourgeois</a>, including the sculpture Woman with a Secret (1947) and the cloth work Arch of Hysteria (2000). The exhibition explores further shifts in material concerns and practices that are pointed reminders of how metaphor can be achieved through various mediums and techniques, where feminine fragility is either embraced or refused. Featured artists include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/12056/Leiko-Ikemura" target="_blank">Leiko Ikemura</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15426/Catherine-Lee" target="_blank">Catherine Lee</a>, who explore the abstractions of their own identities through the prisms of narrative and nationality, while photographic works by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11612/Sally-Mann" target="_blank">Sally Mann</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/20256/Lynn-Davis" target="_blank">Lynn Davis</a> contemplate a woman’s frame of reference in the daunting and desolate landscapes of the American South and Greenland’s icebergs.

‘Musée Imaginaire’ <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2329/Monica-De-Cardenas" target="_blank">Galleria Monica de Cardenas</a>, Zuoz Through March 11, 2023

The three artists featured in ‘Musée Imaginaire’ –&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/23416/Uwe-Wittwer" target="_blank">Uwe Wittwer</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8666/Michael-van-Ofen" target="_blank">Michael van Ofen</a>, and Slawomir Elsner – take images and translate them into gestural abstractions in an effort to analyze collective visual memory. Wittwer, a Swiss painter, uses formalist tendencies of abundance and color to give the composition weight, while methodically reducing the actual image referenced into a reinterpretation of what may or may not have happened. Other works, like van Ofen’s The Virtue Turn 5 (2015) or Eisner’s Portrait of a Young Boy Holding a Drawing (2022), simultaneously beckon the question of painting’s place in the digital age as a point of pleasure or in relation to its historical past.

‘Feelings of the Season - Part II’ <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1404/Galerie-Urs-Meile" target="_blank">Galerie Urs Meile</a>, Ardez Through February 26, 2023
In the companion show to that at the gallery’s Lucerne space, <w>‘Feelings of the Season - Part II’features work by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8254/Hu-Qingyan" target="_blank">Hu Qingyan</a>, Miao Miao,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/36696/Mirko-Baselgia" target="_blank">Mirko Baselgia</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/36695/Rebekka-Steiger" target="_blank">Rebekka Steiger</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8258/Shao-Fan" target="_blank">Shao Fan</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11547/Tobias-Kaspar" target="_blank">Tobias Kaspar</a>, among others, in a minimalist ode to an unknown time or place. Two highlights that reflect the often-enigmatic nature of contemporary art come in the subdued and ironic work of Qingyan – in this case, a marble sculpture masking itself as opened box, The World of Silence III (2021) – and the light and empyrean painting weather gage (2021) by Rebekka Steiger. While both address accessibility or transparency in their material concerns, the different methods executed create a broader inquiry of push and pull within the ontological aspects of materia<w>l, reflecting on the precarity of a changing season or curious weather patterns. The inevitable tension between works that contrast one another adds to the appeal of a group show populated by artists with markedly different practices. </w></w>

Brit Barton is an artist and writer based in Zurich and Chicago.
Published on January 27, 2023.
Caption for full-bleed image: Photo of the Engadin region by&nbsp;Aconcagua.

title_style_3

Discover additional Art Basel galleries across Switzerland&nbsp;

Online catalog

Galleries in Switzerland 

From the Bains des Pâquis to the MAMCO collections, Mai-Thu Perret shares her vision of the smallest of the great European cities <section></section>

Stories

My Geneva: Mai-Thu Perret

Find out about events currently happening at Art Basel galleries around the world

Events

Exhibitions around the world

Exhibitions featuring international heavyweights like Louise Bourgeois and Isa Genzken are on view in St. Moritz, Zuoz, and Ardez 

Exhibitions

BNM - Banner Module

Intro

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon text

Isa Genzken

Isa Genzken text

Petra Wunderlich

Petra W text

Women artists

Karsten Greve

Musee Imaginaire

Musee 2

Musee text

Feelings of the Season

Separator line module

Credits

H2 - Headline title

Information module

Exhibitions featuring international heavyweights like Louise Bourgeois and Isa Genzken are on view in St. Moritz, Zuoz, and Ardez

Welcome,

Discover more related content below: