Stranger Than Paradise

The motifs of the carpet collage come from the museum collection and can be seen in their original form in the exhibition. They are complemented by other works that take up the theme of "paradise" in a variety of ways: transfigured nature, idealizations of rural life, images of longing, but also irritations and ruptures.

When viewed together, the seemingly familiar is cracked; harmony tips over into the absurd, the idyll becomes fragile. The result is not a uniform image of paradise, but a polyphonic collage - like the carpet itself.

The title Stranger Than Paradise refers to this ambivalence: paradise appears as a cultural motif and as a projection surface for individual visual worlds - as a place of longing, a retreat and a stage for exuberant fantasy, but also as a fragile fiction. In Naïve Art and Art Brut, paradise is a recurring motif, also as a place of longing for inner refuge.

Stranger Than Paradise questions the idea of paradise as a harmonious natural idyll, an ideal couple or a heavenly place. It shows: Paradise is a fragile fiction. Works by Pietro Angelozzi, Anny Boxler, Aloïse Corbaz, Emil Graf, Hans Krüsi and Konrad Zülle, among others, are on display.

In the cabinet, textile researcher Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols is showing miniature textile gardens. Magnificently designed, they glitter and sparkle in the light. Their shadows allow the gardens to grow and fill the room.

Here you can lose yourself in the illusion of a paradise. The Hortus conclusus is a protected place of purity and beauty. In today's understanding of a mindfulness garden, it serves as a retreat in contemplative silence.


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.