Surpunt 78
CH-7542 Susch
Switzerland
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 11am–5pm
T +41 81 861 03 03
info@muzeumsusch.ch
Evelyne Axell
Until May 22, 2021
The critically acclaimed exhibition Body Double, a major overview of the Belgian Pop-Surrealist Evelyne Axell (1935-1972), curated by Anke Kempkes and Krzysztof Kosciuczuk, will be on view until May 22, 2021. Axell’s career was cut short by her untimely death in a car accident, aged just 37. Her contribution to early feminist art and Pop Art was subsequently left out of the dominant narratives of art history, alongside her contemporaries such as Pauline Boty, Kiki Kogelnik, and Dorothy Iannone, who only recently found due recognition. Body Double brings together a selection of collages and painterly objects—often created with novel artificial materials—as well as rare three-dimensional pieces and works on paper, many of which have not been displayed in years.
Body Double hones in on the obsessively recurring motif of “the double” in Axell’s compositions as well as draws out a number of aspects in her practice that remain highly topical: from the anti-colonial politics of the 1960s and the US civil rights movement to environmental awareness to a vision of a “bio-botanical” realm where surreal beasts, exotic animals, and tropical vegetation exist as “bio-cultural companions” to use Paul B. Preciado’s term. Axell’s work remains highly evocative in its transgressive sexual iconography, proto-feminist agenda and liberalist utopian outlook.
Laura Grisi
June 5–December 5, 2021
The exhibition The Measuring of Time, curated by Marco Scotini in collaboration with Krzysztof Kosciuczuk is the first comprehensive retrospective dedicated to Laura Grisi in decades. Born in Rhodes, Greece, educated in Paris and living between Rome and New York, Laura Grisi (1939-2017) occupies a distinct position among the trends of the 1960s and 70s. Using photography as her primary research method, she subsequently moved to “variable painting” (featuring sliding panels and neon tubes), followed by immersive environmental installations reproducing natural phenomena, to ultimately arrive at a descriptive, verbal form and mathematical language as a conceptual tool, employed to explore the mechanisms of human perception and knowledge.
Grisi’s practice is a titanic effort to account for the breadth, the multiplicity, the imperceptible nature, as well as the endless proliferation, of all things possible. Its starting point were the constraints, paradoxical gaps, linguistic and semiotic limitations, akin to the explorations of the authors of the Nouveau Roman, the Nouvelle Vague cinema, and the Oulipo group. “Her work,” wrote Lucy Lippard in 1979, “balances between choices and lack of choices. She chooses the usually permutational system and then takes what it gives her.”
Acziun Susch
Muzeum Susch and Art Stations Foundation CH continues to support contemporary choreography and performance through a dedicated programme, Acziun, curated by Joanna Lesnierowska. Acziun is not only responsible for staging original and experimental performances, but provides a vital platform for research, reflection and dialogue with other disciplines and practices as well as social, political and historical contexts. The importance of this activity has been heightened at times where we have been unable to physically gather in theatres. Acziun continues to explore how choreography can still be possible, staying active and in practice with a different set of tools.
We look forward to upcoming collaborations with renowned artists, including Willi Dorner and Lisa Rastl, Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, Dalija Acin Thelander, Christos Papadopoulos, Maria Zimpel and Claudio von Planta. Stay tuned to learn more about our forthcoming programme.
Muzeum Susch and Art Stations Foundation CH
Muzeum Susch opened to the public in January 2019, founded and created by Grazyna Kulczyk, the Polish entrepreneur and long-term supporter of contemporary art whose past flagship ventures have nurtured novel platforms for dialogues in the arts and beyond. The museum is located on the site of a 12th-century former monastery and 19th-century brewery in Susch, a remote village on the historical pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela and Rome in the Engadin valley of the Swiss Alps.
For press enquiries, contact: nina [at] scott-andco.co
