No other artistic medium has experienced so many positive as well as negative attributions as painting. No longer a dominant art form, it has nonetheless remained a key reference for non-painting practices and has itself expanded to embrace approaches that used to be associated with other media, such as Conceptual art, institutional critique or performance art. Painting is continually being re-interpreted and is currently enjoying a revival. It is timely, therefore, that this exhibition at Kunsthaus Pasquart, an institution that has continuously presented painting during the last ten years, should now focus on the current status of the medium in Switzerland.
The exhibition (Un)certain Ground is not an overview of Swiss painting, but focuses rather on painters in or from Switzerland whose work is right now negotiating (new) territory. The selection made by the three curators of the exhibition – Madeleine Amsler, Clare Goodwin and Felicity Lunn – takes into account different generations and geographical locations; it considers artists who are influential, but also others developing interesting work less visibly. Above all, the exhibition underlines the ways in which a delight with experimentation and the relationship between the figurative and the abstract, as well as a breadth of ideas and forms of expression are currently being practised through painting in Switzerland.
Natacha Donzé
(Un)certain Ground
Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, CH
3 July - 4 September 2022
