02.03.21 – 24.05.21
A Visionary in Dialogue with Contemporary Art
The fascination of Emma Kunz (1892 – 1963) has never been greater than it is today. At the same venue where her work was discovered in 1973, the oeuvre of the Aargau researcher, healer and artist is presented alongside contemporary artistic practises. The latter reflect on Kunz’ work or particular topics related to her field of activity.
Emma Kunz is once said to have predicted that a time would come when her paintings would be understood. In fact, much that she anticipated in her holistic thought and practice seems quite natural in today’s art. Living a secluded life far removed from the art scene, she exemplified an expanded concept of art, rejected the idea of art versus non-art and instead opened it up to a wide range of aspects - research, medicine, natural history and the supernatural, the magical, the visionary. Kunz based her drawings on questions that she drew on graph paper with the use of a pendulum. On the principle of repetition and appropriation, she also reused finished drawings and re-explored them. The exhibition includes around sixty of these drawings, many of which are being shown for the first time. The dialogue with recently produced works by fourteen contemporary artists displays new and unfamiliar angles of an oeuvre that is highly contemporary in a time where traditional categories need to be critically questioned.
Contemporary artists
Agnieszka Brzeżańska (b. 1972 in Gdańsk/PL), Dora Budor (b. 1984 in Zagreb/CO), Eitan Efrat & Sirah Foighel Brutmann (both b. 1983, Tel Aviv/IL), Athene Galiciadis (b. 1978 in Zürich/CH), Florian Graf (b, 1980 in Basel/CH), Joachim Koester (b. 1962 in Copenhagen/DK), Goshka Macuga (b. 1967 in Warsaw/PL), Shana Moulton (b. 1976 in Oakhurst/USA), Rivane Neuenschwander (b. 1967 in Belo Horizonte/BR), Mai-Thu Perret (b. 1976 in Geneva/CH), Lea Porsager (b. 1981 in Frederikssund/DK), Tabita Rezaire (b. 1989 in Paris/FR), Mathilde Rosier (b. 1973 in Paris/FR), Lauryn Youden (b. 1989 in Vancouver/CA)
