Featured Events in Zurich in December 2024 (May Updated)

James Franco is certainly the only Hollywood star to read Marcel Proust on Spiderman films sets. Twice Golden Globe-awarded (2002 for James Dean role; 2018 for The Disaster Artist), Oscar-nominated, the 46 year old actor played in some hundred films and series since he was 16. Actor-director-producer, James Franco has been parallelly acting in life as an academic with a PhD from Yale, a writer publishing poetry, a model for Gucci, and mostly as a visual artist since his teenage years developing a considerable visual work mixing painting, video art and performance. After shows with MOCA Los Angeles (Rebel, 2012, along with artists friends Paul McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Ed Ruscha…) and in galleries including Pace and Gagosian, Franco presents his new exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, titled Hollywood is Hell. A powerful series of rough and complex collages composed of various layers of images and signs, symbols and text. 28 shocking canvases and objets d’art appearing as destroyed posters on the street walls of some dirty district will be on display: those collages represent for James Franco “a portrait of Los Angeles during Covid, the artist explains. The streets were empty, the posters damaged on the walls… It was a sort of almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere. I lived at that time near the Hollywood cemetery, where so many stars are buried, and I was walking there. Dreamland had became for me a waste land. And this shit is actually how the dream factory looks like”. One of those collages on canvas is purposely titled: “Hollywood is Hell”. The whole series of works, exhibited for the first time, constitutes a kind of deconstruction of a certain glamorous mythology of Hollywood. Masculinity is devastated – from Bruce Willis’ figure to Batman icon, through Jordan and Travolta – as one of the pillars of a decadent mass entertainment culture. It may come as no surprise that James Franco loves William Burroughs’ literature and his deconstructed writing. Those collages are true deconstructed works. James Franco likes more than everything to walk on the opposite side of the shinning Dream City fantasy. In the highly-standardized Hollywood system, art eventually became a kind of refuge for the actor, the last place of freedom.

We congratulate Teresa Margolles (b. 1963, in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico) for her installation „Mil Veces un Instante“ („A Thousand Times in an Instant“) on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth inaugurated today. The artwork features 726 life masks of transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming individuals—363 from Mexico and 363 from London. Cast in plaster, the masks, displayed inside-out in a cube, contain traces of the participants, such as makeup and facial features, and will gradually decompose over two years. This process symbolizes the transformation and visibility of these often-marginalized lives.

James Franco is certainly the only Hollywood star to read Marcel Proust on Spiderman films sets. Twice Golden Globe-awarded (2002 for James Dean role; 2018 for The Disaster Artist), Oscar-nominated, the 46 year old actor played in some hundred films and series since he was 16. Actor-director-producer, James Franco has been parallelly acting in life as an academic with a PhD from Yale, a writer publishing poetry, a model for Gucci, and mostly as a visual artist since his teenage years developing a considerable visual work mixing painting, video art and performance. After shows with MOCA Los Angeles (Rebel, 2012, along with artists friends Paul McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Ed Ruscha…) and in galleries including Pace and Gagosian, Franco presents his new exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, titled Hollywood is Hell. A powerful series of rough and complex collages composed of various layers of images and signs, symbols and text. 28 shocking canvases and objets d’art appearing as destroyed posters on the street walls of some dirty district will be on display: those collages represent for James Franco “a portrait of Los Angeles during Covid, the artist explains. The streets were empty, the posters damaged on the walls… It was a sort of almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere. I lived at that time near the Hollywood cemetery, where so many stars are buried, and I was walking there. Dreamland had became for me a waste land. And this shit is actually how the dream factory looks like”. One of those collages on canvas is purposely titled: “Hollywood is Hell”. The whole series of works, exhibited for the first time, constitutes a kind of deconstruction of a certain glamorous mythology of Hollywood. Masculinity is devastated – from Bruce Willis’ figure to Batman icon, through Jordan and Travolta – as one of the pillars of a decadent mass entertainment culture. It may come as no surprise that James Franco loves William Burroughs’ literature and his deconstructed writing. Those collages are true deconstructed works. James Franco likes more than everything to walk on the opposite side of the shinning Dream City fantasy. In the highly-standardized Hollywood system, art eventually became a kind of refuge for the actor, the last place of freedom.

Atelier Bossard in Lucerne was one of Switzerland’s most renowned goldsmith’s workshops in the 19th century. Splendid trophies, silverware and jewellery were produced under the leadership of company founder Johann Karl Bossard (1846-1914). The staff not only created their own designs but also crafted exact copies of historical objects from the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods. Craftsmanship had recovered its appeal as people pushed back against industrial mass production. A visit to Bossard’s and the purchase of a prestige item were de rigueur for wealthy noble families and rich industrialists in the booming tourist city of Lucerne. In 2013, the contents of the goldsmith’s workshop were added to the collection at the Swiss National Museum. The exhibition in the National Museum Zurich’s Hall of Fame displays designs, models and historical photos in addition to the workshop’s most beautiful pieces, reviving Bossard’s former brilliance.

Jun Ahn, Miles Aldridge, Nobuyoshi Araki, Roger Ballen, Edward Burtynsky, Stéphane Couturier, Stephen Gill, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Simen Johan, Syoin Kajii, Rinko Kawauchi, Nick Knight, Ola Kolehmainen, Seba Kurtis, Jung Lee, Brigitte Lustenberger, Erik Madigan Heck, Yoshinori Mizutani, Daido Moriyama, Risaku Suzuki, Dominique Teufen, Albert Watson, Michael Wolf, John Yuyi

Galerie Eva Presenhuber presents a group show of three large-scale installation works by acclaimed contemporary artists, Raven Chacon, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, and Oscar Tuazon.

Galerie Eva Presenhuber presents Echoes, its debut solo exhibition with Nairobi-based artist Chemu Ng’ok.

Zurich International Mineral Show will be presenting and selling most beautiful minerals, crystals, fossils, gemstones and jewellery creations Zurich International Mineral Show will be presenting and selling most beautiful minerals, crystals, fossils, gemstones and jewellery creations. You will also find various accessories for the processing of stones. Information Source: Kurt Worni | expotobi

From markets to department stores to online: where and how we shop has changed drastically over the past 170 years. And consumption itself is constantly evolving, too. More money and more free time are shaping what we can do, what we need and what we want, both individually and collectively. This is evidenced by a wide range of photos, as well as graphic works from posters to shopping bags. The exhibition draws on pieces from the Swiss National Museum collection to present eclectic imagery from everyday life. It ranges from the colourful kiosk to the department store that has everything, and from a cheerful get-together at the local pub to a photo slideshow at home reminiscing about past summer holidays.

We present a unique exhibition that highlights the artistic and biographical parallels between the Chinese-Canadian painter Matthew Wong and Vincent van Gogh. The focus is on 40 imaginary landscapes and interiors by Matthew Wong, which are being shown for the first time in Switzerland, complemented by selected masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh.

The largest survey exhibition of Günther Förg’s works on paper, spanning over 30 years, opens at Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse, this September. Förg’s works on paper were an integral part of his multi-disciplinary practice (which comprised drawing, painting, photography and sculpture) and ran parallel to his works on canvas. Executed in a variety of materials, from watercolor, acrylic and oil to charcoal, chalk and ink, these creations are considered works in their own right; instead of using them as preparatory sketches for paintings, the artist would often be inspired to paint and draw on paper after experimenting with his large-scale canvases. The exhibition includes well-known series, including his Grid, Color Field, Grey and Spot works, alongside lesser-known pieces, such as early works on paper from his studies in Munich, or later series such as Mostly Landscapes.

Mit Werken von Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Sammy Baloji, Lothar Baumgarten, Teresa Burga, Maria Eichhorn, Dani Gal, General Idea, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Eva Kot’átková, Susan Hiller, Zahra Malkani, Teresa Margolles, Senga Nengudi, Uriel Orlow, Elodie Pong, Ed Ruscha und Munem Wasif

Japan has a long and rich tradition of graphic design. Its abundance of outstanding works and idiosyncratic designers makes this island nation as thrilling as ever. While Europe is well acquainted with the designers of the postwar period, Japan’s contemporary design scene has been largely invisible. Japanese Graphic Design Today will focus on this generation. By featuring designers born between 1973 and 1993, the exhibition will present an overview of the work being produced today. With numerous originals and creations that have never before been shown outside of Japan, it will provide an insight into the vast array of its contemporary design practices.

Galerie Peter Kilchmann presents the fifth solo exhibition of US artist Hernan Bas, featuring a new collection of paintings, works on paper, and the installation A Little Romeo and Juliet in All of Us (2004/24).

Galerie Peter Kilchmann Zurich presents the first solo exhibition with new works by Swiss painter Valentin Rilliet (b.1996, Geneva, Switzerland, lives and works in Zurich). The artist previously showed his work at the gallery in the group show Three New Positions featuring emerging artists in 2023. The exhibition has two titles: The Mandarin title 蜀風 (Shǔ Fēng, approximately translated into Essence of Shǔ), and the English title Mountain Stories. It is Rilliet’s inaugural solo exhibition since he was added to the gallery’s program.

Galerie Urs Meile is pleased to announce Burn for the Day, the first solo exhibition by emerging Chinese artist Chen Zuo (b. 1990, Hunan Province, China) in Europe at its Zurich gallery. The show commences with a compelling statement, “Burn for the Day”. Inspired by the opening line of the poem Ta sha Xing · Yuan Xī (踏莎行-元夕)1 by the Chinese poet Mao Pang (毛滂) , “ Seeking spring through the snow, lighting lamps to keep the day going.” Chen Zuo’s rewriting distinguishes itself from a helpless compromise with the night and obedience to reality. It diverges from a more Apollonian approach characterized by rigor, order, and control. Instead, he acknowledges and embraces the unknowable future symbolized by the night and seeks the birth of a new order through a forceful intervention into the chaos. A violence that can be seen as a reaction against social conditioning and the structural oppression faced by the global South in the process of universal urbanization.

For the 7th exhibition at 36.1 projects, Mai 36 Galerie presents SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT, TWO BITS, Gowoon Lee’s first solo show in Switzerland. Television represents a fleeting form of collective memory. Lee navigates the tension between ultra-recognizable images and abstraction by isolating objects from familiar cartoon narratives.

Mai 36 Galerie presents 4th solo exhibition with Koenraad Dedobbeleer (*1975 in Halle, Belgium) on two floors of the Mai 36 townhouse. In his exhibition titled That Is All There Is, Perception and Memory, the artist playfully presents artworks as intricate vessels of histories that evolve and transform freely based on their juxtapositions, contexts, and modes of display.

This November, Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Bahnhofstrasse, brings together an exhibition showcasing a selection of Lehni’s unique collaborations with renowned artists that resulted in exceptional artworks and furniture. Artistic partnerships have been an integral part of the Swiss metal furniture company’s history for more than a century and they are a focal point of their ongoing commitment to crafting products of outstanding quality, sustainability and design. A series of furniture by the visionary Donald Judd is on display, alongside works by Swiss artist Max Bill, as well as sculptures by Sol LeWitt. The exhibition also highlights a series of artists’ portraits by Doris Lehni-Quarella, a trained photographer who helmed the company in the 1980s and ‘90s.

We are delighted to welcome you to the group exhibition Surprise, Surprise! This is the hundredth exhibition in our gallery. Our colleague Anna Konstantinova drew our attention to this anniversary. We seize this opportunity to take a look back at some moments in the history of the gallery.

When one talks about the work of Johnny Izatt-Lowry, one often wants to start with the classic movie trailer intro “In a world where…” (add stirring music). He takes from one world and places it into another. The first world is a fast-moving, stressful and at times dark one - the digital world. The other is ours - the physical. The pathos employed by Izatt-Lowry also resembles an epic; the works are understood as a wide-ranging, comprehensive narrative of a reality of our time.

Natural disasters, water shortages, toxic wastewater discharges... The world is facing increasingly severe water resource challenges. How humans deal with precious water resources will determine the future development of humanity and the earth. This exhibition will collect design works from various fields such as architecture, art, and science, and introduce design concepts born around "water" from all over the world and their potential to reshape the future. Each designer tries to open up a way out of the water crisis for mankind by providing innovative solutions.