EXHIBITIONS
VALENTIN RILLIET
A FEAR OF MIST
25 AUGUST – 6 OCTOBER 2023
VALENTIN RILLIET A FEAR OF MIST
Valentin Rilliet (b. 1996) paints large, beautifully composed canvases that feature elements of historical scenery, and historical figures, often combined in an anachronistic way. For Rilliet’s eyes see a world that is riven by the simultaneous presence of internet time, historical time, family time, object time, and even vegetative time. Rilliet, more than many painters of his generation, is intensely conscious of the fact that painting is not “a problem,” something we need to justify. Rather, painting contains many problems, and they can be brought into contact with each other through the act of composition.
Rilliet graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2023. A Fear of Mist is his first solo show.
DU YAN & NAIWEN CHOU
METAMORPHING FAILURES
13 JULY – 13 AUGUST 2023
DU YAN & NAIWEN CHOU METAMORPHING FAILURES
With the exhibition Metamorphing Failures we are happy to show two artists who happen to be friends: Du Yan, born in Beijing, and Naiwen Chou, born in Taipei. Although working in different media, Du Yan and Naiwen Chou share a common interest in temporality, duration of work, identity, memory, loss and traumas. Metamorphing Failures is a suggestion of morphing their shared interest into a visual representation. Naiwen Chou created an immersive installation in our experimental room. And she also uses the outside space in front of the gallery to show some of her sculptures. Du Yan’s large-scale drawings occupy our main gallery space.
Metamorphing Failures can be visited by appointment.
SIAN COSTELLO
BABY OBEY ME
21 APRIL – 18 JUNE 2023
SIAN COSTELLO BABY OBEY ME
Sian Costello is a multidisciplinary artist, based in Limerick, Ireland. Her work is characterised by a strong engagement with corporeality. The bodies she depicts, hers and others, human and non-human, are seldom shown in their entirety. They remain fragmented. They are distorted to some extent, glitching into the abstract: A self-portrait of Costello doesn’t show her face. A body of a horse, but the head is disguised. Costello reveals parts of bodies, but never the entire picture. She reveals part of a story, but never the whole plot.
Baby Obey Me is Sian Costello's first solo show in Switzerland.
PACHACAMAC
6 APRIL – 15 APRIL 2023
PACHACAMAC ATLAS BY STUDIO TOM EMERSON (ETH ZURICH)
Students from ETH Zurich and PUCP Lima worked together to produce a sheltering structure for archeologists in the archaeological landscape of Pachacámac, Peru. Alongside the structure, the team produced a whole new topological survey of the territory: the Pachacamac Atlas.
The exhibition at Modern Animals showcased the publication about this collaborative project along with photographs by Sarah Sharif and Jens Knöpfel as well as a movie by Géraldine Recker.
THE OVERSTORY
13 JANUARY – 23 FEBRUARY 23 2023
THE OVERSTORY – GROUP SHOW
Trees grow on the roof of our gallery. They are so mighty and beautiful and vulnerable, but we hardly ever pay enough attention to them. We don’t look up, we look down. The most beautiful works of art in our gallery are the beeches, plane trees and yews on its roof. They are our permanent exhibits. We dedicate the title of our first exhibition to them. With Overstory (german: Blätterdach), the newly founded Modern Animals gallery introduces itself to a Zurich audience.
Artists: Daan Couzijn, Lea Luzifer, Marie Matusz, Ramon Hungerbühler, Roman Gysin, Samuel Bron, Sian Costello, Simon Gromic, Tore Wallert, and Vivek Mathur.