Exhibition space NEST in cooperation with Ursula Hauser Collection

The Bachelor Fine Arts program of the Department of Fine Arts is pleased to announce a cooperation with the world-renowned Ursula Hauser Collection to be launched in the fall of 2021. NEST is an exhibition space of the Bachelor Fine Arts program that was initiated by the Department of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2018 and is located in the building’s fine art studios.

Established in 2018, the exhibition space NEST is designed to combine teaching with proactive exhibition programming and promote an ongoing exchange of ideas between students and alums of the Zurich University of the Arts and the inter-/national arts scene. The programming is distinguished by a variety of exhibition formats—from shows featuring students’ work to thematically focused group exhibitions and collaborative ventures involving external partners. It turns the spotlight on young inter-/national positions that speak to contemporary discourses.

Starting in the fall of 2021, NEST’s programming will be enhanced by a new cooperation with the Ursula Hauser Collection. The Swiss collector Ursula Hauser (b. 1939) has built one of the most important collections of contemporary art in the world, with a focus on women artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as Louise Bourgeois, Maria Lassnig, and Alina Szapocznikow. The cooperation agreement calls for the integration of works from the collection into the university’s teaching and research programs. The loans will allow for a wide-ranging discussion of questions of art conservation as well as theoretical concerns in a dialogue anchored by outstanding examples from artistic practice. After an extended period in which digital communication was key, the pleasure of the physical experience of art and its discursive reflection are once again coming to the forefront of attention. That is why Dr. Raphael Gygax (Head Bachelor Fine Arts) and Prof. Swetlana Heger (Head Department Fine Arts) see opportunities especially for the students: “We look forward to the extraordinary potential this cooperation holds: not only will seeing the works outside a conventional exhibition framework enrich the engagement with them, we will also be able to explore them together with the students, incorporate them into a variety of instructional formats, and generate fresh insights. We are most grateful to Ursula Hauser for her generous readiness to provide works from her collection as objects of study for an instruction that will empower students.”

For the fall of 2021, the current curatorial team (Elsa Himmer & Dr. Gabrielle Schaad) has planned three exhibitions that chart different thematic and associative approaches. The first exhibition is linked to the seminar on “Art & Collecting” taught by Laura Bechter and Dr. Gabrielle Schaad. It puts the focus on questions of (art-historical) reference in contemporary art in the example of animal representations and, on a technical level, on matters of conservation and art handling. The subsequent two presentations will feature works by alumni and faculty in a dialogue with external creative positions. Centered around works from the Hauser Collection that have rarely been on public display, these presentations will coalesce into loosely cohesive thematic exhibitions probing questions concerning the boundary between art and design, materiality, forms of physicality, and other issues.

Animals We Are Ourselves
November 18–December 2, 2021
Opening: Thursday, November 18, 2021, 6–9pm

Sensing Out Loud: I Am the Last Woman Object
December 16, 2021–January 6, 2022
Opening: Thursday, December 16, 2021

Aggregating Matter: Of Dandelions and Architectures
January 20–February 12, 2022
Opening: Thursday, January 20, 2022, 6–9pm

Contact: nest.exhibitions [​at​] zhdk.ch

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