Opening Friday, June 7, 17–21
June 8 – August 23, 2024

Gallery opening hours during Zurich Art Weekend:

Friday, June 7, 11–21
Saturday, June 8, 11–20
Sunday, June 9, 11–18

The exhibition brings together three generations of women artists who share a common strategy of disappearance. It highlights artists whose work subtly infiltrates existing works or situations, often making their presence felt in almost imperceptible ways. These artists understand the rules yet subvert them, creating pathways to ignite counterfires and ensure their voices are heard, intact and essential. This position is often challenging as it opposes market and institutional norms, often resulting in precarious material and existential situations. I thought of the exhibition as a celebration of artists who have taught me how to look and listen with more attention. 

It all started with the work of Jacqueline Mesmaeker, who passed away last year at the age of 93. From her prototypes for wallpapers in the 1960s, a perfect embodiment of the art of anonymity and camouflage, to her drawings embedded within existing books, and her insertion of pink fabrics into architectural gaps, the theme of existence on the verge of disappearance was central to her practice. She made me aware that other artists had used that paradoxical strategy of hiding to be better seen, and that most of them were women. Some, like Sturtevant, Sherrie Levine, Lutz Bacher, Ana Jotta, Rochelle Feinstein or Isabelle Cornaro, use and divert existing signs and languages to construct an alternative story or to dismantle existing ones. Others, like Pati Hill, Beverly Buchanan, or Cinzia Ruggeri – respectively writer, parasitologist, and designer – who complexify the notion of what it means to be an artist, by coming from other worlds, assuming other positions, or sometimes simply staying silent. 

These strategies resonate with those of Marie Angeletti and Camilla Wills, two artist friends whose aesthetic and existential courage has been an inspiration. Both have resisted the art world’s expectations for a coherent, unique, and distinctive body of work. Instead, they infuse their analytical and existential experience into whatever they choose to work with or upon, sometimes visibly, other times not. Olga Balema, Steffani Jemison, Katja Mater, Hana Miletić, and Eleanor Ivory Weber are artists of the same generation who share their exacting mode of working and living. 

Supporting these elusive artists is a network of women gallerists to whom I also wanted to pay tribute: Francesca Pia, Bridget Donahue, Florence Bonnefous, Isabella Ritter, Carole Greene, and Nadja Vilenne.

– Anne Pontégnie