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Past Exhibitions
TIME IS NOW | ANA DE ALVEAR
31.5.-13.7.24
What at first appears to be magnified contact sheets of analog photography, are in fact stunningly realised photorealist colour-pencil drawings of a vibrant micro-world. By playing with perceptions on multiple levels, Ana de Alvear, draws attention to the complex and intricate role mosses play in developing and maintaining ecosystems. The artist not only makes us questioning the reality of what we are seeing, but also challenges us to reconsider how we perceive the world around us.
Spanish-born multidisciplinary artist Ana de Alvear has exhibited her works all around the world, including the San Diego Museum of Art in the United States, the Hara Museum in Tokyo, Japan, and both the Reina Sofia Museum and the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain.
EVERY MISSING FLOWER | JUAN ZAMORA
31.5.-13.7.24
Juan Zamora has created a hand-drawn herbarium featuring the 34 most endangered flora of Switzerland. These eco-realistic drawings give voice to the voiceless plant species, and by drawing inspiration from the myth of Echo – a nymph doomed to repeat words endlessly – Zamora adopts an eco-feminist approach, encouraging viewers to question and reevaluate their connection to the natural world. Presenting them as classified and catalogued samples, he highlights their commodified appeal, playing with our desire to pick them and take them home. Additionally, the artist has crafted an organic, site-specific installation for the gallery space, creating a QR code from soil collected from a location in Zurich where a tree was removed. Establishing a psychogeographic connection to the original location, that speaks of contemporary displacement between the human and the non-human world.
Born in 1982, Zamora is a nomadic artist and biologist working at the intersection of art, music, design, science, pedagogy, and social practice with a focus on the environment. Juan Zamora has exhibited his work all around the world, most notably at Manifesta Biennial, The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. He has been received the National Spanish Awards ABC, BMW Foundation, and Princess of Girona of Arts & Literature, among others. He is currently based at Ca´Foscari University in Venice.
DO YOU DARE? | In Touch With The World
The photographs of Alberto Venzago
1.3.24 -16.5.24
Photography has the capacity to tell us a lot about this world. Alberto Venzago (*1950 in Zürich) is considered one of the best photographers of our time, and for over fifty years he has been dedicated to bringing this world closer to us through his photographs. In fact, much of his work takes us to places and people that normally lay beyond our reach – be it the Japanese mafia Yakuza or Mick Jagger up close on stage. Therein lies their undeniable fascination and visual impact. Venzago hails from an era in which the idea of photography was that of a credible and concerned testimony.
And that is precisely what makes them so rare today. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to photograph so intimately, freely and attentively, with such patience, curiosity, perseverance and care. The materiality and process of photography has changed fundamentally in recent years. So has the speed with which images are now distributed directly from the camera, and thus the value that is attached to them. Today’s photos are computed in the camera. As a result, we now consume rather than just view the world through images and our image-making routines. The truthfulness of any intended image narrative is compromised by the machine’s calculations and the algorithms of social media.
In contrast, Alberto Venzago’s works reveal a well-honed and uncompromising craftsmanship. Perfection is more than a technological aspect here; it is the best translation of what happened in front of the camera into a photographic work. There is a sense that this photographer places a special value on the moment, the people and the places depicted. Each photo is a time capsule. You can sense the close physical proximity between the photographer and those portrayed. This conveys a certain sense of authenticity. Time and place are still clear coordinates that anchor his pictures in the world and, by extension, Venzago himself. We do not doubt the photographer’s expressed interest in Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Tina Turner.
The Moos Fine Art Gallery is delighted to be able to present an exclusive selection of Alberto Venzago’s works and together with the photographer delve into the world they reveal.
At the opening reception of the exhibition on March 1, 2024 at Galerie MOOS, Alberto Venzago will speak about his beginnings and his long journey across concert stages and theaters of war, through orchestra trenches, artists’ studios and back rooms, the rainforest of Malaysia and the urban jungles of New York and Tokyo.
COSMOS
4th November 2023 – 27th January 2024
MOOS Fine Art is delighted to present its augural exhibition, COSMOS. A group show dedicated to the work of contemporary artists who approach the vast thematic spectrum of the “Universe”. Presenting an international and diverse group of sculptors, ceramicists and painting positions, the selected artists attempt in their own unique fashion to interpret, comprehend and position themselves within the megacosm. Using a plethora of materials and perspectives, COSMOS sheds light on the multifarious narratives and pictorial approaches that touch upon nature, society, psychology, fantasy and culture. All the ingredients in our bodies were once assembled in the hearts of dead stars over billions of years ago. These atoms, held together temporarily in our human frames, are, for just a short, temporal moment, capable of observing the universe around us and our place within it. Although humans have long understood that they may not be in the centre of the universe, they are its only interpreter. As American cosmologist Carl Sagan once said: “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
The Madrid-based Sandra Val recombines architectural elements with everyday items, to create stories and dialogues that resonate with ideas about deep time and space. Also based in Madrid, the multidisciplinary artist, Ana de Alvear works mainly in video and colour pencil. In her series “SPACETIME”, her vivid drawings attempt the impossible; fixing a moment of deep time and capturing the split seconds of the universe. Spanish born painter, Oscar Seco weaves art historical references with stylistic elements form pop culture to make fantastical and vivid scenes that are once deeply personal and historically emotive.
The time-based installations of Susanne M Winterling critically engage the representation of reality. Encompassing modernistic concepts, power structures and hierarchical historiographies. The work of Alejandro Botubol focuses on light and illumination, highlighting the duality between natural and artificial light it builds on the sensorial experience of space, color and perception to investigate the materiality of light. Influenced by the painters of the Flemish Renaissance, the work of Patricia Mateo can be seen as a perpetual investigation into her environment, society and her place within it. For her it comes down to a question of perspective, allowing the viewers to fortify the work with the strength of their own imagination. Blurring the line between designer and artist, the Zürich-based Simone Züger focuses on aesthetic clarity, committed to reappropriating objects and fashioning them into something new.
ANA DE ALVEAR: CAMOUFLAGE
The exhibition Camouflage by artist Ana de Alvear was on view from 8th June – 30th June 2023 in our Pop Up in Erlenbach and was curated by Dr Vanessa Moos.
Ana de Alvear’s vivid and colourful series of works on paper, take the survival strategies of non-human organisms as a metaphor for how people find ways to escape and evade hostilities in their everyday lives.
In this series of works on paper, the artist looks at the survival strategies of a variety of different creatures, focusing on their use of camouflage to evade detection. In some cases, these barely perceptible mammals, reptiles and fish seem to dissolve into their backgrounds, mimicking colours, patterns and movements to blend in and disappear into their own uniquely tessellated environments. By doing so, the artist draws parallels with how humans go about their daily lives, concealing themselves to get by.
So often people are trapped in domestic and work life settings, vulnerable to the everyday hostilities of both micro and macro aggressions. As we strive for self-preservation, finding ways of camouflaging ourselves and concealing our true character can be our only genuine means of escape. Scratch beneath the surface and you’ll discover that non-human organisms and their survival tactics are more connected to us than we care to admit.
Flickering between the figurative and the abstract, these colour pencil-on-paper works appear like autostereograms – two-dimensional images imbued with a palpable sense of depth. In their glistening and vivid luminosity, they force us to perceive the world around us differently and explore how to be invisible but present in an age of heightened self-awareness and surveillance.
CHARLOTTE HOPKINS HALL: PENT-UP CASTLES
10th of March to 22nd of April 2023
Presenting polyptych paintings in her trademark aesthetic of finely painted and visually strict imagery, Hopkins Hall brings us her sharp scrutiny of the paradigms that have embedded recent political and social moeurs. The stark canvases disclose a real fear of losing free will in a world gripped by social media and clannist ways of thinking. In an age of anger where shouting above the other has become a norm and exclusion a punishment for non-conformity to the neo-social protocol, Hopkins Hall brings us a visual expression that ranges from tongue-in-cheek to serious subject matters. As a nod to an era indisputably saturated with images of the face, Hopkins Hall uses the image of her own back as a motif that is repeated ad-nauseum. This obsessive repetition is used to various ends, thematically and visually. In conjunction with the titles, that are meant as mini manifestos, we are immersed into an absurd world in which the figures play out their roles conducted by Hopkins Hall as the puppet master.
Opening hours:
by appointment
Galerie MOOS fine art
Forchstrasse 20 | 8704 Herrliberg ZH | Switzerland
Dr. Vanessa Moos | +41 76 701 21 25 | mail@moosfineart.com