The title of the group show No Condition is Permanent reflects the current situation and says that things are changing constantly. The title is upbeat, forward looking towards a different future. Many things will not be the same after Covid-19, but making predictions is a difficult task. During the lockdown we avoided the ubiquitous online presentations because they do not correspond to the way we look at art. The images on a flat screen can’t replace the encounter with the original. Therefore, we were thrilled that we were allowed to reopen the gallery May 11 and that from today onwards we can even celebrate an opening. We asked our artists to contribute a piece to the show either done before or during the quarantine. All responded enthusiastically. They had reacted differently to the restrictions caused by the quarantine: some of them started to work intensively, others were more restrained. Their working situation, being in the studio on their own, didn’t change much, but some mundane things, like getting material, paint, canvas, stretchers became difficult.
Klodin Erb contributes to the show with a large painting in the first room. For her the lockdown proved motivating: she painted a substantial series of new landscape paintings.
Franziska Furter started to develop a new series of works called Banner and added sculptures to the series Minimal Surfaces which she had started during a residency this spring in Mallorca.
Slawomir Elsner paraphrases in his ongoing series of adaptions of Old Master paintings a jewel by Rembrandt depicting the painter himself in his studio in front of a huge canvas and thus reflecting on his own situation in his studio in Berlin.
Sebastian Utzni dived into the world of diagrams by developing two screenprints State of Emergency 1 and 2 in which he merged different tables and charts into abstract compositions. Besides in the gallery the screenprints will be shown for a week from 18 June onwards in the public space on billboards in the areas 8005 and 8004 in Zurich.
Benedikte Bjerre contributes to the exhibition with a group of five pages from the New York Times screenprinted onto large aluminum plates – standing as a group they condense the current events.
Pierre Haubensak contributes with a painting from his show in the gallery Hide-and-seek from 2019 in which he worked instead with a brush and a scraper, taking away applied paint. In this exhibition he unfolded a sovereign late work.
From Mamiko Otsubo we chose Stars from 2007. Often she gives her sculptures an unexpected twist with a slight intervention. Here she confers two metal frameworks of the classic Butterfly Chair design new meaning by simply brass-plating them; the result, following the terminology by Marcel Duchamp, is a "rectified readymade“.
Clare Goodwin continues to expand the possibilities of her painting practice, starting a new series of works, which we show for the first time. Slawomir Elsner and Clare Goodwin both will have solo shows in the gallery in the second half of the year.
Anne-Lise Coste continues to surprise us: this time with new paintings on jute, depicting straight horizontal colourful and white lines drawn with her index finger recalling the magic works by the late American painter Agnes Martin and Italian artist Giorgio Griffa.
From Anna Amadio we show a work from 2006, in which she painted herself dressed up as a clown with glue and acrylic. In this humorous but also at the same time serious group of works she revealed the inner feelings of human beings.
wiedemann/mettler created specially for the exhibition three new photographs of two interiors Pawson 1 and 2 and a sumptuous green landscape Beverly Hills covering them with a thin translucent wax layer and hence giving them a mysterious blur.We are very happy to present this stunning group of works from our artists and are looking forward to share with you their diverse but always fitting contributions to our times.
