KAMIAR’S MONTHLY REPORT

The art world within “St. Moritz – Engadine” has been a well-kept secret, only recently revealing parts of itself throughout the past few years.

The region around St. Moritz has so much art to discover! Each season is packed with high-end exhibitions and quite a few jewels behind closed doors in private collections, as well as a lot of public art. Visitors can experience the art of St. Moritz by taking one of two paths: by the “Art-Marathonist-Way” or more casually by the “Art-Savourer-Way”.

Art-Marathonist-Way (aka. The sporty way to hit all of the spots): Adrenalin addicted individuals, who need more than six vernissages a day to feel alive can feel comforted that St. Moritz is truly a post-urban paradise! Although, it may feel like a lost village in the middle of the Alpes far from any metropole, the cultural and sportive lifestyle that St. Moritz offers outshines most middle-range cities. With over 60 galleries and seven 5-star hotels to stay at throughout the region, you’ll be sure to fill your art agendas from December through February.

An Art-Savourer, on the other hand, will want to relax and fully enjoy the fairy-tale, snow covered landscape and rid yourself of urban stressors. If that sounds like you, St. Moritz is also the perfect place to empty your mind and dedicate yourself to seeing the art shows without any pressures or appointments that could derail your time to discover freely.

This way of experiencing art is known as “Slow Art”; a concept widely promoted by the lovely Grazyna Kulczyk, who chose not to build her new private museum in the center of some megalopolis a few years back, but rather behind a wall of mountains you need to pass through first, in order to reach a tiny, Lower-Engadin Swiss Village of only 219 inhabitants.

Peacefully embedded in the valley, the Muzeum Susch opened to the public in January 2019 and awaits its visitors who need to do more than simply stumble into it on their 30-minute lunch break.

For visiting an exhibition at Muzeum Susch, one needs to truly want it! You must plan and travel at least 45 minutes from St. Moritz (2.5 hours from Zurich and about 3.5 hours from Milan). The experience of “Slow Art” starts as a pilgrimage to the art itself. Only then can you immerse yourself completely without the hassle of a pre-planned appointment or reservation.

The slowed down rhythm of people on holiday is the very explanation why galleries are sprouting up in St. Moritz and the neighbouring villages. For an international gallery like Hauser & Wirth, with branches all over the world, it is a perfect place to meet up with their collectors and actually catch up while they have time.

Personally, I think “Slow Art” has blossomed now during the pandemic; many have been really creative in installing more art outside of gallery spaces.

So, what’s on right now in St. Moritz?

In St. Moritz, there are currently 5 major galleries amongst the smaller, high-end scene: Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Galerie Karsten Greve, Robilant+Voena and Vito Schnabel Gallery.

Unlike the four others who came to St. Moritz for its fertile art market, Andrea Caratsch is the only local one among the top gallerists. This winter, he staged three parallel exhibitions: George Condo, Salvo and the 25 year old Charlotte Leimer with “Sacred Relations.

Leimer’s first solo show, featuring her newest series of work begun during the Spring lockdown in Switerland, was sold out in the first few days of opening. Like a herd of cattle, 6 monumental works made of burlap canvases, self-built and self-framed, invite the viewer to dive into the deeply philosophical world of the young artist.

She had observed a herd of cows with their calves in the fields; tagged, fenced, ready to be milked or processed. Moved by the presence of unconditional love one often times amongst animals, Leimer’s series centers around this exploration and like the power of paint that binds the viewer to the artist, milk in abundance binds the mother to a child; a calf to the cow.

Hauser & Wirth was bold enough to stage a solo show of Philip Guston, even in times of #BlackLivesMatter marches that have postponed similar exhibitions at other institutions.

Karsten Greve celebrates Louise Bourgeois. Proud to have been the first to exhibit Louise Bourgeois in Europe after her emigration to the USA, the Greve’s St. Moritz space is pleased to present her 3rd solo show, “The Couple” 2003, shines through the window and mesmerizes passers-by. This aluminium, hanging work beautifully depicts Bourgeois’ principal themes: humanity, birth and death, love and hate, the human body and sexuality. The suspended sculptures also have the capacity to spin in opposite directions, existing in a perpetual state of fragility and ambivalence.

Robilant+Voena’s remains closed, but Marco Voena teamed up with Oscar Humphries and the Damien Hirst Studio to place the sculpture “Monk” 2014 on the frozen lake. Earlier in the planning, it was supposed to be part of a greater Damien Hirst show – in these unpredictable times it is also the faith of this upcoming show. Two more sculptures will be installed on the frozen lake, plus two more in additional outdoor areas.

Vito Schnabel shows his father, Julian Schnabel, who has glued broken ceramics onto canvas in “Trees of Home (for Peter Beard)”.

Galerie 10, a smaller gallery, steps on the international stage by collaborating with London’s JD Malat Gallery, a loyal VOLTA participant. Together, they present a group show including a diverse roster of their artists: Colombian abstract expressionist, Santiago Parra, the Ghanaian figurative painter, Kojo Marfo, as well as American abstract painter, Andy Moses and Turkish sculptor Hande Sekerciler.

Conrad Jon Godly is welcomed home, as JD Malat’s represented artist is originally from the nearby area. Godly explores ways between painting and the three-dimensional by celebrating the superlatives of the impasto.

One of the most valuable visits is to the local virtuosic photographer, Daniel Meuli.

Over the past few years, Meuli developed not only a technique, but also a range of studies, which are unique in genre. With his own self-made camera obscuras, he captures the artistic values of contemporary photography often lost through the modern use of smartphones and optimization tools.

Sometimes Meuli reflects for days about whether the wind and light conditions are just right, as he only has a single shot. The camera obscura must be constructed in size, depending on the format and dimensions of the print, which results in a wide range of self-built camera from teeny-tiny to the size of a truck. After meticulously analyzing the consistence of snow in 2019 and lark needles in 2020, this Winter, Meuli adventured himself in decomposing the patterns and beauty of waterdrops.

Interestingly, the art scene does not limit itself to the obvious and exposed key players of St. Moritz, but moreover exists in spaces where an untrained eye doesn’t always expect it. This mysterious art gray area are the renovated private homes old Engadine and mountain-style exhibition spaces that pride themselves on being anti-white-cube; they cluster in and around Madulain-Zuoz-S-chanf and Ardez.

Monica de Cardenas Galleria: “Jeux de mains”: Nathalie Du Pasquier and Alessandra Spranzi.

The dialogue between the works of Nathalie Du Pasquier and Alessandra Spranzi in their current Winter show, complete each other and generate new meanings, new poetry, new shadows. It is, as if one starts a sentence, that the other continues and that the observer should end, as if one hand points to the other, points to the game. ”Hand Games”.

Stalla Madulain

The Stalla Madulain, an old 500-year-old barn turned gallery in 2014, has now established itself as a must-see when around, showing mainly young Swiss artists with a connection to the local area. When light shines through its filigree wooden windows, the stable seems to come alive and politely presents to you its jewels. This Winter, Swiss artist, Mirko Baselgia, known for his gentle work with local materials picked from nature, occupies the center stage on the upper floor. Swiss artist, Olga Titus, conquers the center and lower levels of the barn embellishing it with her unique works on paillette fabric, as if she wanted to dress up the little stable. In fact, the Dior fashion house has already become enchanted by her work, collaborating on a paillette Olga Titus X Dior Lady Dior Art Bag.

 Von Bartha: “Words Made of Atoms”, John Wood & Paul Harrison.

We need to laugh and feel entertained like never before as well as be subtly guided into philosophical and ontological reflections: Are words made of atoms?  Although the intuition would promptly say yes, isn’t it, that words are at least, if anything, made of atoms? Aren’t they either a juxtaposition of letters or a momentum of sound? Since they began working together in 1993, John Wood & Paul Harrison’s play with words have ranged from all depths of absurdities to genius. Serendipitously, they’ve managed to bring back sense and meaning to spaces where it was felt there was none left; they ought to conceive an “Encyclopedia of Nonsense”.

It is a poetic show that outgrows the wall of some minds and of the physical space of the gallery. Indeed, some materialized ideas began to wander on nearby walls outside of the gallery. A much-appreciated artsy scavenger hunt outdoors, in these times of misanthropy of closed spaces.

Somalgors74.

My dear friend who hides in the lower Engadine mountains.

“Sgraffito” is an ancient technique of scratching away layers of coloured plaster. One can obtain an alternative to frescos on house facades that stay for a few hundred years! As the technique gets rarer, an artist initiative established the goal to reactivate old traditions in a way that suits todays millennials.

Curdin Tones, the founder of the Somalgors74 initiative, puts QR codes on facades and programmed the app FATSCHADAS. The app allows you to experience virtual content on the facade of the cultural initiative Somalgors74 in Tschlin, allowing you to visualize contemporary sgraffitos on your phone. This current project is a result of a collaboration with the artist duo The Rodina. To me, it is a really precious practice saving old traditions from extinction.

Text and images: Carolin A. Geist

To experience St. Moritz and the Engadine area, connect with Carolin at @carolin.a.geist

Follow @kammaleki and @voltaartfairs for more art insights.