Our highlights from artgenève 2024
Running since 2012, artgenève has grown into a regular on
the calendar with galleries, foundations, and non-profits heading to Geneva to
show work. With 80 galleries – mainly from Switzerland and central Europe but
also further afield – coming to show what’s hot and happening, we visited to
find extract the best of artgenève with an architectural and built environment
lens.
Elisa Larvego
Sans titre #6, #9, #10, #16 (2015)
www.vego.ch
Taken from her Chicanes series of 23 images, these images record makeshift barricades designed to slow down traffic, installed on roads leading to Notre-Dame-des-Landes by those who opposed a proposed airport development on the land. The site has been occupied since the early 2010s with several self-made structures across an autonomous community, which have slowly become made permanent since Emmanuel Macron shelved plans for the airport in 2010.
FMAC - Collection d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève
www.fmac-geneve.ch
Sans titre #6, #9, #10, #16 (2015)
www.vego.ch
Taken from her Chicanes series of 23 images, these images record makeshift barricades designed to slow down traffic, installed on roads leading to Notre-Dame-des-Landes by those who opposed a proposed airport development on the land. The site has been occupied since the early 2010s with several self-made structures across an autonomous community, which have slowly become made permanent since Emmanuel Macron shelved plans for the airport in 2010.
FMAC - Collection d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève
www.fmac-geneve.ch
TILT
New Territories 1/2/3 (2024)
this-is-tilt.com
French artist TILT’s gallery graffito reposition found fragments of tags and urban art into artworks, extracted and abstracted from any city context. In 2018, the artist won the L'art est vivant - Promises Prizeat Art Paris.
Montresso art Foundation, Marrakech
www.montresso.com
New Territories 1/2/3 (2024)
this-is-tilt.com
French artist TILT’s gallery graffito reposition found fragments of tags and urban art into artworks, extracted and abstracted from any city context. In 2018, the artist won the L'art est vivant - Promises Prizeat Art Paris.
Montresso art Foundation, Marrakech
www.montresso.com
Mathis Altmann
Stud Finder (2017)
Swiss-based German sculptor Altmann creates uncanny and somewhat sinister miniature worlds, hinting at psychological traumas, consumer detritus, and secret lives. A ramshackle dolls house, modelled on a suburban Los Angeles, was made and then dismantled, as if a life had lived within before abandonment. A previously private domain, left for squatters, ghosts, and memories. Altmann was shown at the Fonds cantonal stand, a fund created to commission and support contemporary art in the region, including a series of works at train stations such as Ricardo Benassi’s Daily Dense Dance Desiderio (DDDD) (see 00012).
Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain Genève
www.fcac.ch
Stud Finder (2017)
Swiss-based German sculptor Altmann creates uncanny and somewhat sinister miniature worlds, hinting at psychological traumas, consumer detritus, and secret lives. A ramshackle dolls house, modelled on a suburban Los Angeles, was made and then dismantled, as if a life had lived within before abandonment. A previously private domain, left for squatters, ghosts, and memories. Altmann was shown at the Fonds cantonal stand, a fund created to commission and support contemporary art in the region, including a series of works at train stations such as Ricardo Benassi’s Daily Dense Dance Desiderio (DDDD) (see 00012).
Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain Genève
www.fcac.ch
Thomas Huber
3.5.2023 (2023)
An exhibition by Swiss artist Huber At MASI Lugano was recently profiled in recessed.space (see 00148), with this soft lake vantage also featured prominently at artgenève 2024. The son of an architect, Huber’s work focused on interior architectural spaces with a de Chirico infused otherness, but five years ago bought a house in Cinzago, Italy, and has dedicated his practice to recording Lake Maggiore.
Skopia, Geneva
www.skopia.ch
3.5.2023 (2023)
An exhibition by Swiss artist Huber At MASI Lugano was recently profiled in recessed.space (see 00148), with this soft lake vantage also featured prominently at artgenève 2024. The son of an architect, Huber’s work focused on interior architectural spaces with a de Chirico infused otherness, but five years ago bought a house in Cinzago, Italy, and has dedicated his practice to recording Lake Maggiore.
Skopia, Geneva
www.skopia.ch
Jean Gfeller
Level? {NO DATA} #1-10 (2023)
Cinematic frames recording the mundanity of corporate existence carry an air of horror and unease. A swiss artist born in 1996, Gfeller’s flat palettes focus on individuals within melancholic urban realms with unknown and yet-unlived narratives left to the imagination.
Dilecta, Paris
www.editions-dilecta.com
Level? {NO DATA} #1-10 (2023)
Cinematic frames recording the mundanity of corporate existence carry an air of horror and unease. A swiss artist born in 1996, Gfeller’s flat palettes focus on individuals within melancholic urban realms with unknown and yet-unlived narratives left to the imagination.
Dilecta, Paris
www.editions-dilecta.com
JPP
Cri du cœur vers l’Absolu I (2024)
Cri du cœur vers l’Absolu II (2024)
Écho du souffle (2023-24)
Remy Ugarte Vallejos
Still, life… (2024)
A presentation from the city’s HEAD art school presented four artists in an urban mise en scene curated by Varun Kumar. JPP’s ad hoc waiting area is infested from dead leaves flooding from a locker, while Remy Ugarte Vallejos’ canvas carries something of the occult into a very other-worldly momentary escape from the artfair’s consumerist grid of white walled selling spaces.
HEAD – Genève
www.hesge.ch/head
Cri du cœur vers l’Absolu I (2024)
Cri du cœur vers l’Absolu II (2024)
Écho du souffle (2023-24)
Remy Ugarte Vallejos
Still, life… (2024)
A presentation from the city’s HEAD art school presented four artists in an urban mise en scene curated by Varun Kumar. JPP’s ad hoc waiting area is infested from dead leaves flooding from a locker, while Remy Ugarte Vallejos’ canvas carries something of the occult into a very other-worldly momentary escape from the artfair’s consumerist grid of white walled selling spaces.
HEAD – Genève
www.hesge.ch/head
Justin Liam O’Brien
James (2023)
Paintings which fuse adolescence, identity, and the interiors of both architecture and the self feature on O’Brien’s paintings which carry an aura of homosexual yearning and doubt. Here, behind a curtain James conceals himself from the city and its potentialities, isolated but at the threshold.
Semiose, Paris
www.semiose.com
James (2023)
Paintings which fuse adolescence, identity, and the interiors of both architecture and the self feature on O’Brien’s paintings which carry an aura of homosexual yearning and doubt. Here, behind a curtain James conceals himself from the city and its potentialities, isolated but at the threshold.
Semiose, Paris
www.semiose.com
Guillaume Fuchs
HIAS I19 (2019-22)
HIAS I15 (2022)
Sans titre (2019-IV) (2019)
HIAS I38 (2022)
Dizzyingly detailed graphic drawings open up worlds where Archigram collide with Zaha Hadid, and modernist rigidity is subsumed within natural growth. There is something Ballardian and Swiftian about Fuchs’ worlds which contain a multitude of dramas within dense black line drawings. Perspectives collide, creatures and chaos emerging from the rupture.
FMAC - Collection d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève
www.fmac-geneve.ch
HIAS I19 (2019-22)
HIAS I15 (2022)
Sans titre (2019-IV) (2019)
HIAS I38 (2022)
Dizzyingly detailed graphic drawings open up worlds where Archigram collide with Zaha Hadid, and modernist rigidity is subsumed within natural growth. There is something Ballardian and Swiftian about Fuchs’ worlds which contain a multitude of dramas within dense black line drawings. Perspectives collide, creatures and chaos emerging from the rupture.
FMAC - Collection d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève
www.fmac-geneve.ch
Amal Lin
Gate (2020-21)
www.amal.art
Recently, recessed.space featured exhibitions of Maha Ahmed miniatures at Leighton House and a group show at MK Gallery (see 00156), so it was welcome to see Rossi & Rossi gallery present Amal Lin’s collection of intricate miniatures, tiny but immense in delicate detail and architectural rendering. A graduate of London’s Princes’ Foundation, this painting of an islimi-decorated gate hints at a world beyond.
Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong
www.rossirossi.com
Gate (2020-21)
www.amal.art
Recently, recessed.space featured exhibitions of Maha Ahmed miniatures at Leighton House and a group show at MK Gallery (see 00156), so it was welcome to see Rossi & Rossi gallery present Amal Lin’s collection of intricate miniatures, tiny but immense in delicate detail and architectural rendering. A graduate of London’s Princes’ Foundation, this painting of an islimi-decorated gate hints at a world beyond.
Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong
www.rossirossi.com
Ann Veronica Janssens
Californian Blinds (2008)
In the summer of 2023, Ann Veronica Janssens’ delicate, light-playing works danced in the darkness of Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca, as covered here in recessed.space (see 00105). Even isolated and within glaring artfair whiteness, the simple works sing with gold leaf transforming the utilitarian domestic minimalism into a visual game of light and reflection.
Fondation Thalie, Brussels
www.fondationthalie.org
Californian Blinds (2008)
In the summer of 2023, Ann Veronica Janssens’ delicate, light-playing works danced in the darkness of Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca, as covered here in recessed.space (see 00105). Even isolated and within glaring artfair whiteness, the simple works sing with gold leaf transforming the utilitarian domestic minimalism into a visual game of light and reflection.
Fondation Thalie, Brussels
www.fondationthalie.org
Luts
& Guggisberg
Kachina (2020)
www.lutz-guggisberg.com
Swiss collaborators Andres Lutz and Anders Guggisberg work prolifically across a range of mediums, but always working with a sense of play, comic, and sense of the absurd. Manmade, functional objects collage to create questioning objects that could have a use, if only someone could work out what it would be.
Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz
www.monicadecardenas.com
Kachina (2020)
www.lutz-guggisberg.com
Swiss collaborators Andres Lutz and Anders Guggisberg work prolifically across a range of mediums, but always working with a sense of play, comic, and sense of the absurd. Manmade, functional objects collage to create questioning objects that could have a use, if only someone could work out what it would be.
Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz
www.monicadecardenas.com
Zhenya Machneva
On the lake (2022-23)
www.zhenyamachneva.com
Romantic remnants of the industrial sublime are saved from abandonment and captured in tapestry. Chimneys, cogs, pipes, girders, and chains have an animalistic feel with Machneva’s translations, her memories of architecture and machines softening over time and distance.
Vallois, Paris
www.en.vallois.com
On the lake (2022-23)
www.zhenyamachneva.com
Romantic remnants of the industrial sublime are saved from abandonment and captured in tapestry. Chimneys, cogs, pipes, girders, and chains have an animalistic feel with Machneva’s translations, her memories of architecture and machines softening over time and distance.
Vallois, Paris
www.en.vallois.com
