The group exhi­bi­tion includes works by five artists who have chosen paint­ing as their pre­ferred medium of expres­sion. The works by Nat­acha Donzé, Ray Hegel­bach, Ivan Mitro­vic, Anna Schirin Schnei­der and Nora Steiner are char­ac­ter­ized by the engage­ment with every­day impres­sions and sym­bols, specif­i­cally the social power dif­fer­en­tials and the dig­i­tal and pop-cul­tural imagery they inher­ently express and repro­duce. They exper­i­ment with and freshly inter­pret tra­di­tional con­ven­tions of visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion, ges­tural habits, and view­ing regimes within the con­text of paint­ing. The title of the exhi­bi­tion, “Soft Shell”, makes ref­er­ence to the con­tra­dic­tory mate­ri­al­ity of paint­ing as well as the clash of assertive­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­ity and play­ful­ness and seri­ous­ness in the artists’ respec­tive practices.

The exhi­bi­tion is gen­er­ously sup­ported by:

Stiftung Jaberg

Die Mobil­iar

Ursula-Wirz Stiftung

saa ag & wernli maler ag

Kul­turs­tiftung des Kanton Thurgau

Guggen­heim-Stiftung

Burg­erge­meinde Langenthal

Basel-Stadt Kultur