Franz West is well known for his sculptural work that merges monumentality with irony. In the 1970s he created beautiful collages that depict different mindsets from being part of a community to sheer loneliness. Here, an aroused couple is shown in front of a green screen, their sexual characteristics painted red, creating a strong contrast to the background.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once said that Sophie Calle has the gift of making visible “the mysterious form of the existence of the other.” Here she uses a personal belonging, a Terrycloth bathrobe such as the ones you find in a hotel bathroom, and loads it through a short text with a narrative of intimacy: “I was eighteen years old. I rang the bell. He opened the door. He was wearing the same bathrobe as my father. A long white Terrycloth robe. He became my first love. For an entire year, he obeyed my request and never let me see him naked from the front. Only from the back. And so, on the morning light…, he would get up carefully turning himself away, and gently hiding inside the white bathrobe. When it was all over he left the bathrobe behind with me.”

Mitchell Anderson uses existing objects and imagery in a body of work that explores contemporary and historical contradictions, humor, and tragedies of existence. In a broad multi-media practice, Anderson presents contemplative objects of collective hope and failure and questions the narrative capabilities and codes of the visual and physical. In an ongoing series, Anderson created red neon signs all presenting the word “join”. Each is presented in a different font, continuing Anderson’s ongoing interest in the sagas and content civilization embeds in even the seemingly smallest visual cues. Grabbed from posters ranging from a 1754 call for state unity designed by Benjamin Franklin to a 1990 stack piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the neon works become beacons for open recruitment and teamwork temporarily freed from politics and history. In the context of an empty hotel room, the invitation becomes somehow ambivalent.

Christina Forrer creates tapestries, paintings, and works on paper that depict wild, dense scenes of conflict. Coarse figures argue, rebel, and attack each other; the compositions depict scenes of violence, torture, and aggressive embrace. The characters in Forrer’s works have big eyes, gaping mouths, and terrified expressions; they seem linked by generations as if they are all part of the same wild and comically terrifying family. Forrer’s practice is rooted in the tradition of tapestry and art (e.g. the german expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner) and invested in the materials from which these works are made. She carefully weaves colors together to create eclectic palettes and cunning, villainous characters.

Renowned drag queen Victoria Sin combines drag with multimedia art forms since 2013. Alternative narration is the aesthetic prominence of her video works. in “Act 1 Part 3 of a View from Elsewhere” she performs a multimedia fantasy on the experience of desire, shame, and identification of the material queer body, featuring sound design by shy one. In “ Illocutionary Utterances” a high definition close up of Victoria Sin’s lipsync in drag makeup is played over a sound piece exploring the role that speech acts play in the ascription of gender. Speech acts that ascribe gender outside of a subject’s control are compared to speech acts of self-identification, while overpainted lips mime exaggerated attempts to sync with an altogether different soundtrack.

The sculptures of Inge Mahn are socially minded. The German artist creates places that are personal but also reflect her relationship with the outside world. While studying at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in 1969, she built a small house to temporarily shield herself from the daily political discussions in Joseph Beuys’ classroom. Mahn pursued her interest in small-scale structures all through the 1970s, creating works ranging from a confessional on wheels to a bird’s nest. The work “Swings” consists of a pair of anthropomorphically shaped deck chairs hanging from the ceiling. Their intimate togetherness high held above solid ground evokes a relationship in suspense.

Jan Kiefer has created a body of works dedicated to a snowman, a friendly mascot that he imagined as an inflatable sculpture that he alternately activates in neat, small-scale oil paintings. While the snowman enjoys winter sports to the fullest on the slopes, thus gaining almost humanlike traits, he endures a very lonely existence as a blow-up figure. Deprived of the fun and the enchanting landscape, he experiences lockdown, condemned to confinement. Through his visionary mindset, Kiefer has created this group of works before the pandemic.

AMERICAN ARTIST KAREN KILIMNIK HAS DEVELOPED AN OBSESSION WITH BALLET, IN PARTICULAR THE CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC STORY BALLETS OF THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES. SHE SEES IT THROUGH THE PRISM OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE. SEVERAL OF HER WORKS RELATE TO THE RUSSIAN STAR DANCER RUDOLF NUREYEV, WHO REGULARLY STAYED AT HOTEL EUROPE WHEN DANCING AT THE ZURICH OPERA HOUSE-HE EVEN HAS A SUITE NAMED AFTER HIM. “VODKA COCKTAILS AT THE RUSSIAN TEAROOM IVAN+RUDY” IS BASED ON A COCKTAIL MENU AT THE RUSSIAN TEAROOM IN NEW YORK, A PLACE THAT NUREYEV LIKED TO VISIT WHEN HE WAS IN TOWN.

Belgian artist Kris Martin is a conceptual gambler who loads everyday objects with new meaning. Here he uses a vintage mirror to provocatively declare “the end” on its front. By facing the mirror, we are invited to inscribe the suggested temporality on our life story and thus create an imaginary end. Through the mirroring of the font, a further dimension opens up, as if the assertion would be a reflection of itself. As writer Marouane Laassafar has put it, our romantic lives are full of ends that eventually become new beginnings: “some people will leave you soon no matter how, but it’s not the ending of your story, it’s just the ending of their role in your story. Cause life goes on…”

From early photographs set in his bedroom to long-term bodies of work grounded in the photographer’s studio, American artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s practice is oriented around photographic portraiture’s relationship and dynamics, its settings, and materials. The camera and artist are not always visible but always implied, referring back to the self-reflexivity inherent in Sepuya’s practice and the positions and gestures of looking, being seen, and creating scenes that disregard the viewer and emphasize the making, and makers, of a picture.

In her installations Mina Squalli-Houssaïni evokes a sense of intimacy. Her figures are in-between animals and Star Wars mascots. Three large-scale insects are dressed in traditional Algerian celebratory gowns caught in an imaginary conversation. Creating references to matrimonial figures such as the mother, the aunty, and the grandmother the sculptures are emitting something overly familiar. What are they debating? Who is the leader? Who remains silent?

Most of the Amsterdam-based artist Alicia Framis’ work touches upon social practice and performance. the new commission consists of the artist taking on the role of a hope giver for one year, sending positive thoughts to people who need it. The project’s webpage reads as follows: “Do you want to connect with another situation? Are you looking for connections that make you feel better? In these moments of uncertainty, we all need a boost of hope. For one year, hope giver will share hope with those who seek it. You just have to enter your postal address and I will send hope to you, wherever you are.”

Swetlana Heger appropriates brands and marketing strategies in her work, uncovering the ways in which we construct, obscure and deny the role of women in society and among cultural artifacts. Through recontextualization and reuse of everyday products into the field of art, she shows important aspects when it comes to conveying history, art production and interpretation to the public.

Cheyenne Julien has created a body of paintings that is unique in its fresh, non-academic style. Depicting herself, her family, and friends, or sites that conjure up specific memories in her community, Julien allows autobiography to guide her work. People in the street or their apartment’s intimacy are depicted as familiar figures that evoke a rich and multi-faceted experience of her neighborhood. All of her sitters (including herself) have exaggerated traits that are reminiscent of cartoon. The resulting racial stereotypes are a way for the artist to break taboos about black identity. Without hesitation and in a poignant way, Julien points at the open wounds of racial injustice from a very personal standpoint.