LUCERNE.- The exhibition Ab auf die Insel! (Off to the Island!) asks what happens when the familiar and the strange meet, become superimposed, perhaps even enrich one another. At what point is someone a native? Who is able to travel? Does art reproduce a colonial view? Is wanderlust an encroachment? Artists, researchers and adventurers have always been attracted by the exoticism of Islands, be it as paradise or hell. But what impact does life on an island have on art? Selected positions by artists from a time period of about a century widen our view of the theme, with works made either on tropical islands or during fictional travels.
Both the point of departure and the focus of the exhibition are works by Claude Sandoz (*1946, lives and works in Lucerne). From 1997 he travelled regularly to St. Lucia. His artistic involvement with the Caribbean island is marked by a luminous colourfulness, extensive picture series and detailed assemblages. In narrative series of works Sandoz addresses the theme of encounters and everyday life on St. Lucia. Figures and flower arrangements are concealed in supposedly abstract colour compositions, replicating into a planar pattern. The artist bundles his extensive series into large formats that reflect the vibrant abundance on St. Lucia. Sandoz’s intense watercolours show his approach to the tropical flora and fauna and the people of Soufrière, and reveal that the artist has remained an observer and is quite aware of this fact.
The painting style of Max Pechstein (1881, Zwickau – 1955, Berlin), with the strong dominant contours, is marked by sketches and impressions he gathered on his travels in search of paradisiacal originality. His fascination, however, was for both landscapes and people, be that in Pomerania, Switzerland, France or the South Sea island of Palau. Rinus Van de Velde (*1983, lives and works in Antwerp) and Samuel Herzog (*1966, lives and works in Zurich) solve the dilemma of travel and the associated temporal, ecological and cultural problems by shaping a fictional island or experiencing imaginary adventures. Van de Velda interweaves image, text and cardboard objects to form scenarios in which reality and fiction intermingle. Herzog often personally welcome viewers to his Lemus Museum, provides insight into the island’s cuisine and the kitchen as a place where problems are solved, and tells us about the flora, fauna and political turmoil on the island state.
The artists Lena Henke (*1982, lives and works in New York) Marie Karlberg (*1985, lives and works in New York) and Anna Kanai (*1971, lives and works in Zurich) stayed in Fabian Marti’s artists’ residence TwoHOTEL in Brazil. TwoHOTEL is on a peninsula and can be reached on foot at low tide, whereas at high tide it is cut off from the mainland. The works of the three artists were made during, or in the context of that artists’ residency. During a trip to Hawaii Christine Streuli (*1975, lives and works in Berlin) in two series of works took up the subjects with which the U.S. advertised, crudely and excessively, for the 50th federal state in the 1960s.
Curated by Fanni Fetzer, Director
