Tracks and Traces

The exhi­bi­tion brings together recent works of non-rep­re­sen­ta­tional paint­ing by four artists from German-speak­ing Switzer­land and the Romandie, Switzer­land’s French-speak­ing region. Across all four prac­tices, painterly processes play a cen­tral role, with the scale and move­ments of the body being par­tic­u­larly sig­nif­i­cant. This is expressed in very dif­fer­ent ways in their work. Thomas Hauri, for instance, reworks his large-format water­colours again and again, so that the traces of water­ing and drying, lay­er­ing and rub­bing can be expe­ri­enced almost phys­i­cally. Izidora | LETHE com­bines painterly and per­for­ma­tive processes, work­ing in a site-spe­cific and col­lab­o­ra­tive way. LETHE’s works are cre­ated, for exam­ple, using pig­ment shaped by the move­ments of par­tic­i­pants within the space. Chris­telle Kahla uses sym­bol­i­cally charged objects such as cloth­ing or jew­ellery as sten­cils for sprayed images. She refers to the phys­i­cal while avoid­ing painterly ges­tures. Anas­ta­sia Pavlou’s paint­ings, with their emphat­i­cally bold appli­ca­tion of colour, stand in the tra­di­tion of expres­sive paint­ing move­ments, whereby the pos­si­bil­ity of devi­a­tion, for instance towards the con­cep­tual or the fig­u­ra­tive, is a fun­da­men­tal condition.