Whispers in the Attic
The attic – a room full of stories, memories and secrets. Dark, dusty and often forgotten, yet always imbued with a strange magic that awakens curiosity and perhaps also a little fear in us. Attics harbour traces of the past, whispering stories that linger between dust and darkness. A space of transformation, where things disappear or take on a new meaning. In literature, the attic has always served as a setting for mysterious revelations as a place that connects the visible with the hidden. Attics represent the hidden chapters in family stories – the forgotten suitcase, the old letters, the secret diaries. They are places of retreat, sometimes places of refuge – thinking of Anne Frank, whose moving diary made an attic world-famous, or the characters in novels by Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Brontë, whose attics came to symbolise inner conflicts and hidden identities. At the same time, attics are places of fantasy and creativity: they invite us to confront the darkness with light, to see the past anew and to explore the uncanny artistically.
The exhibition ‘Whispers in the Attic’ picks up on these themes and brings together seven artists who work with a wide variety of media and interpret the theme in very different ways – through installations, sculptures, paintings or objects. The ambivalence of the attic as a place between dream and nightmare, memory and forgetting, repression and discovery is thus explored from different perspectives. The attic becomes not only a physical but also a metaphorical space: it stands for the unconscious and the hidden within ourselves, which we are often reluctant to enter.
Maria Ceppi’s ‘Objets Cultes’ group of works includes smaller sculptures in which the artist merges everyday objects with one another, nostalgically recalling past existences and absent histories. With their cinematographic sculptures, which oscillate between the present and dystopia, the artist duo Glaser/Kunz create astonishing illusions and unexpected encounters, thereby questioning the reliability of our perception. They thematise the complexity of memory and draw attention to the hidden and unspoken. Christoph Hefti’s starting point are natural textile worlds, which are colonised by indefinable mythical creatures that tell stories and yet retain their secrets. In his ceramic works, which also function as lamps, he moulds bizarre creatures into luminous house ghosts. Augustin Rebetez’s universe, which includes videos, paintings, drawings and sculptures, is dominated by bizarre, dark and monster-like figures in exuberant scenes in which dream and reality merge. With a flair for the surreal and playful, Tanja Roscic transfers a wide variety of found materials into another dimension and illuminates the objects shifted in scale in memories of fairy tales such as ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ by Lewis Carroll. The poetic exaggerations of familiar things create a shift in perspective and allow us to enter other worlds that are hidden from us. Loredana Sperini’s ceramic sculptures, wax reliefs and textile objects are characterised by poetic fragility and move confidently between abstraction and figuration. The human body, often enraptured, fragmented or alienated, is thematised as a carrier of memory and trauma oscillating between vulnerability and strength as well as decay and preservation.
With ‘Whispers in the Attic’, the attic is transformed into a place of artistic dialogue between past and present, intimacy and absence, light and shadow. An exhibition that makes the whispering of things audible.
With Maria Ceppi, Glaser/ Kunz, Christoph Hefti, Augustin Rebetez, Tanja Roscic and Loredana Sperini
Opening, Tuesday, May 20, 6 – 9 pm Estrich 401, Hottingerstrasse 10, 8032 Zurich (access only possible via stairs)
The exhibition can be visited without prior appointment on the following days:
Friday, May 23, 2 – 6 pm
Saturday, May 24, 2 – 5 pm
Friday, June 6, 2 – 6 pm
Sunday, June 15, 11am – 2 pm
Friday, June 20, 2 – 6 pm
Saturday, June 21, 2 – 5 pm
Viewing by appointment
Frédérique Hutter 079 660 34 10 I Bettina Meier-Bickel 076 376 05 02
Guided tours
Tuesday, May 27
Wednesday, June 4
each at 6.30 pm, door opens at 6 pm
Finissage, Tuesday, June 24, 5 – 8 pm
With Michael Bodenmann, Florian Bühler, Gina Fischli, Patrick Graf, Fabienne Hess, Nici Jost, Lutz & Guggisberg, David Renggli, Niklaus Rüegg, DS Son and Martina von Meyenburg.
Vernissage: Friday May 17, from 6 pm at Mr. Green, Predigerplatz 2, 8001 Zurich
During Zurich Art Weekend the exhibition is open by appointment only.
Guided tours: Tuesday May 28 and Tuesday June 18, at 6.30 pm
“Artspotting” is the first geolocated game app that uses audio, images, text and quiz functions as well as creative contributions to communicate art in public spaces in the city of Zurich. Designed and developed for smartphones, the digital mediation tool, which sees itself as a “serious game”, makes it easier for young people to get to know the analogue experience of art in urban space in a new, entertaining way that integrates digital elements. The game app uses game-based learning to convey the artworks and their creation as well as the background, historical events and architectural features of the urban context.
The project is being launched as a pilot in Zurich and is available for free in App stores since November 2023.
An art education project initiated and realised by Karin Frei Rappenecker and Bettina Meier-Bickel.
Press articles:
Das Ideale Heim – January 2024.pdf
Daniela Keiser ©Nelly Rodriguez
A permanent exhibition in cooperation with the Art Collection of the City of Zurich curated by Bettina Meier-Bickel.
Selected works from the collection of the City of Zurich will be used to revive the most diverse historical premises of the Zentrum Karl der Grosse, a debating house of the City of Zurich. The selection of artists refers to the fascinating and turbulent history of the house, which is closely linked to the development of the Frauenverein.
The range of topics covered by the 13 artists of different generations is broad. Works in all kinds of media – painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and video – on various themes are presented in the bistro and in the rooms of the house. Identity, individuality, transience, corporeality, and the questioning of realities are approached in a variety of ways.
With works by Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Barbara Davatz, Clare Goodwin, Daniela Keiser, Zilla Leutenegger, Verena Loewensberg, Manon, Pipilotti Rist, Katja Schenker, Shirana Shahbazi, Loredana Sperini, Milva Stutz and Annelies Štrba.
For guided tours of the exhibition, please register here
Press articles:
The art collection of the Migros Genossenschaft Aare, which has been built up in various stages of varying intensity since the end of the 1960s, is being redefined following the “Focus” realignment decided in 2019. New exhibition venues have been sought and found for numerous works from the archive. Various donations to museums (including Aargauer Kunsthaus, Kunstmuseum Bern, Museum Haus Kontstruktiv), municipal and cantonal collections, estates, medical institutions and new placements at the club school locations and the various branches mean that the works are increasingly accessible to the public.
Expertise of the entire art collection (over 600 works) and concept and implementation of reorientation 2021 – 2023
On a former factory site in Horgen (Zurich), an extraordinary housing project is being created with a “Kunst am Bau” intervention in the garden area. The architecture, designed by Kaspar Partner Architekten, is a homage to the former industrial production building. The garden concept with natural planting and pathways is created by Guido Hager Landscape Architecture.
The “Kunst am Bau“ project is in harmony with the garden concept as well as the architecture of the buildings and visually puts a unique stamp on the area, which contributes to the identification and qualitative enhancement of the site.
Competition winner: Julian Charrière
Realization: 2022
Curatorial advice and direction: Bettina Meier-Bickel
© Visualization by Pawel Althamer
On the Letzibach D site in Zurich-Altstetten, a development with apartments, kindergarten and commercial use is to be built. Three developers are planning to build a communal housing estate (properties of the city of Zurich), a housing estate of the Stiftung Alterswohnungen der Stadt Zürich (SAW) and a superstructure of the Stiftung Wohnungen für kinderreiche Familien (SWkF). Three independently managed buildings will be created under one roof, which will form a single unit, but in which – except for the exterior space – there will be no intermixing of the three developers.
In order to realize a “Kunst am Bau” project for the housing estate, a study commission was issued upon invitation.
Curatorial advice: Bettina Meier-Bickel
Competition winner: Pawel Althamer
Realization: 2021 – 2025
An association founded in November 2019 from art historians Karin Frei Rappenecker (www.art-agency.ch) and Bettina Meier-Bickel together with historian Brigitte Ulmer.
The purpose of the association is to promote access to art for all strata of the population, whether in an institutional context, private art foundations, in public space or in spatial environments where art normally plays no or a subordinate role. The association develops projects that promote access to and the education of art, and it carries out research projects that examine the access to and impact of the supply of art in various social, economic and geographical contexts.
© David Hauptmann
Discussion with five different art collectors on the occasion of “Kunst: Szene Zürich 2018”
November 28, 2018, Kunsthalle Zurich
Concept and presentation by Bettina Meier-Bickel
Installation view Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, © Rotwand, Zurich, 2012
Insights into the gallery business.
About different gallery models.
The future of Swiss galleries.
(among others Lyceum Club)
© Cédric Eisenring
A public art exhibition project curated by Christoph Doswald.
Organisation by the work group for art in public space (AG KiöR) and the City of Zurich´s Civil Engineering Office.
Support of project of Swiss artist Luc Mattenberger (Pick Up, 2015)
13.6.-13.9. 2015
© Constantin Luser_Micro Orbit_foto Constantin Luser
Temporary exhibition project of galleries and offspaces in Zurich.
Support of project of Austrian artist Constantin Luser.
© David Gagnebin de Bons, Aurèle Sack
Sculpture Triennial in Bex 2014
Curated by Noémie Enz & Jessica Schupbach.
Support of sculpture projects of Swiss artists Luc Mattenberger and Guillaume Pilet.
© Estate of Klaus Lutz
Presentation of the work of the late Swiss artist Klaus Lutz.
