Date
19 September – 07 December 2024
Venue
GOWEN Storage
Catherine Gfeller, Les Nuits du Couvre-Feu XLV, 2024
This autumn, GOWEN celebrates landscapes with an ambitious group show featuring over twenty past and contemporary artists from both Switzerland and abroad whose visual language engages with landscape, reimagining, and transforming the imagery and canons of the genre. Making the Landscape proposes a reflection on the reshaping of the landscape from a genre often considered as minor in classical traditions to a primary means for artistic experimentation expressed through real or imaginary settings.
Persuaded by the certitude that many of the major revolutions in art history have occurred within the scope of the landscape genre, the show explores this category in contemporary art.
Selected photographic works by several artists are on view at GOWEN Storage, Rue Jean-Calvin 4. Remnants of man’s intervention – here derelict or graffitied vehicles – in the compositions of French-Swiss visual artist Catherine Gfeller (b. 1966) and M’hammed Kilito (Moroccan, b.1981) remind of the ‘push-pull’ dynamic between man’s actions and their impact on nature, a theme also reflected in an experimental painting on sandpaper by Nick Archer (British, b. 1963). Like a scarring of the landscape, these visible alterations to the land’s original surface signal damage by human activity or associated natural disasters. Moreover, the symbolic presence of the car hints at a journey without destination, or the drawing of humanity closer towards something unknown. The photographic works of Annelies Štrba complete the presentation.