Installation Views

Works Exhibited

About

To be simple is not always as easy as it seems.
—Ferdinand Hodler

Gagosian Gstaad is pleased to announce Swiss Made: From Ferdinand Hodler to Urs Fischer, a group exhibition of painting, drawing, and sculpture by modern and contemporary Swiss artists, and figures associated with art brut.

Swiss Made was inspired in part by Visionary Switzerland, a traveling exhibition curated by Harald Szeemann in 1992 for Kunsthaus Zürich. Szeemann framed his selection of work by iconoclastic artists in conscious opposition to the reductive notion of a Swiss “national” aesthetic, contradicting the widespread perception of Switzerland as a country without a history. The exhibition underscored the continuing influence of Constructivism and explored the legacy of the art brut tendency first identified and promoted by Jean Dubuffet in 1947.

Similarly, Swiss Made integrates the modern and the contemporary, juxtaposing work by key twentieth-century figures with that of contemporary descendants. Among several works by Ferdinand Hodler are a striking 1916 self-portrait drawing and Die Technik (1896/97), a characteristic work on paper from the artist’s Symbolist period. Hodler is known for his development of “parallelism,” a style that emphasizes the symmetry and rhythm that he believed underpin society; his work after 1900 also displays an expressionist bent in its use of strong color and geometrical simplification. A trio of works by Paul Klee includes Sommerhäuser (1926), a playful oil-and-watercolor depiction of a cluster of holiday homes, and Maske aus Zis-we-sen (1933), a watercolor portrayal of a horned head that exemplifies the artist’s repeated use of the mask as a complex motif that shifts between the humorous, the melancholic, and the macabre.

#SwissMade

Artists

Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler

In Conversation
Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler

Gagosian hosted a conversation between Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler, director of Swiss Institute, New York, inside 30 Ghosts, the artist’s exhibition of new paintings at Gagosian, New York. The pair explores the work’s recurring themes—the cycles of life, continuity and the future, and death—and discuss how the conceptual and pictorial structures Bonnet borrows from seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting converge to form a metaphor for hard labor, basic animal urges, and the things we often try, but fail, to hide.

Between Shadow and Light

Between Shadow and Light

Scholar and researcher Yves Guignard, who is working on Balthus’s archives for a revision of the Balthus catalogue raisonné, examines the artist’s engagement with drawing, arguing for a more concerted attention to these works than scholarship has paid them.

Urs Fischer: Wave

Urs Fischer: Wave

In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.

Body Horror: Louise Bonnet and Naomi Fry

Body Horror: Louise Bonnet and Naomi Fry

Cultural critic Naomi Fry joined Louise Bonnet for a conversation on the occasion of Louise Bonnet Selects, a film program curated by the artist as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. The pair discussed how the protagonists of the seven selected films are ruled, betrayed, changed, or unsettled by their bodies, focusing on David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979).

Louise Bonnet, Johanna Burton, and Celinda M. Vázquez

In Conversation
Louise Bonnet, Johanna Burton, and Celinda M. Vázquez

Join Gagosian for a panel discussion with Louise Bonnet; Johanna Burton, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Celinda M. Vázquez, chief external affairs officer of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA), on the occasion of Bonnet’s donation to PPLA of the proceeds from the sale of her painting Red Study (2022).

Louise Bonnet: On “Red Study” and Supporting Reproductive Rights

Louise Bonnet: On “Red Study” and Supporting Reproductive Rights

Louise Bonnet speaks with Freja Harrell about her new painting, her donation to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, and the role of art in the fight for reproductive justice.

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Urs Fischer: Denominator

Urs Fischer: Denominator

Urs Fischer sits down with his friend the author and artist Eric Sanders to address the perfect viewer, the effects of marketing, and the limits of human understanding.

Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022

The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.

Setsuko and Y.Z. Kami

In Conversation
Setsuko and Y.Z. Kami

The artists address their shared ardor for poetry, the surfaces of painting, and nature.

Regards de Setsuko

Regards de Setsuko

Join Setsuko on a tour of her exhibition at the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau in Rueil-Malmaison, France, the former residence of Empress Joséphine. The video brings together the artist; Isabelle Tamisier-Vétois, chief curator, and Élisabeth Caude, director, Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau; and Benoît Astier de Villatte, cofounder of the atelier Astier de Villatte, Paris. They discuss the origins and development of the project, which is designed as a dialogue between Setsuko’s work and the decorative ceramics held in the museum’s collection.

Urs Fischer: Lovers

Urs Fischer: Lovers

The exhibition Urs Fischer: Lovers at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, brings together works from international public and private collections as well as from the artist’s own archive, alongside new pieces made especially for the exhibition. To mark this momentous twenty-year survey, the artist sits down with the exhibition’s curator, Francesco Bonami, to discuss the installation.

Louise Bonnet and Dodie Bellamy

Louise Bonnet and Dodie Bellamy

Poet and novelist Dodie Bellamy visits the artist Louise Bonnet at her Los Angeles studio as she prepares for an exhibition of new works in Hong Kong and the inclusion of one of her paintings in the 59th Biennale di Venezia. The two discuss the power of horror, the intensity of memory, and their creative processes.

Louise Bonnet: Onslaught

Behind the Art
Louise Bonnet: Onslaught

Join Louise Bonnet in her Los Angeles studio as she works on new paintings ahead of her exhibition Onslaught, at Gagosian, Hong Kong.

Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022

The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).

Awol Erizku and Urs Fischer: To Make That Next Move

Awol Erizku and Urs Fischer: To Make That Next Move

On the eve of Awol Erizku’s exhibition in New York, he and Urs Fischer discuss what it means to be an image maker, the beauty of blurring genres, the fetishization of authorship, and their shared love for Los Angeles.

Bourse de Commerce

Bourse de Commerce

William Middleton traces the development of the new institution, examining the collaboration between the collector François Pinault and the architect Tadao Ando in revitalizing the historic space. Middleton also speaks with artists Tatiana Trouvé and Albert Oehlen about Pinault’s passion as a collector, and with the Bouroullec brothers, who created design features for the interiors and exteriors of the museum.

Louise Bonnet: Sphinxes

Louise Bonnet: Sphinxes

Ali Subotnick investigates the artist’s surreal new series of drawings.

The Grand Chalet: An interview with Setsuko

The Grand Chalet: An interview with Setsuko

On the twentieth anniversary of Balthus’s death, Setsuko gives an intimate tour of the Grand Chalet and reflects on how the 1754 Swiss mountain home enriched their lives as artists.

Augurs of Spring

Augurs of Spring

As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.