Re:Genesis

20.10.2022 – 22.10.2022

Dara Maillard, Floyd Bolliger, Alyssa Berrez, Tatsuki Browne

Off-site exhibition in a former protestant church, ALAG, Zurich

RE:GENESIS is a self-organized exhibition by young artists currently studying at the Zurich University of the Arts. The project originated from an interest towards the exhibition space ALAG, a former protestant church in Wipkingen, now used as an uncommercial open space. The space has once been used as a gathering and organizational space for the Klimastreik, amongst others. Thus, it gained the nickname of Klimakirche. The exhibition engages with the building and its history and seeks to explore the historical impact which Christianity has had on contemporary Ideology and values. The Old Testament is recontextualized and reframed to fit modern understandings and questionings.

In the context of the exhibition, I have presented the piece It Seeks my Luster, built from Gold and Ashes, and rises, and falls. 

I invastigate subject matters which can be read as the pillars of eastern and western European civilizations, such as their rites and traditions, systems of belief and religion, conceptions of good and evil just as the forms in which they are passed down, including myths, folklore, poetry. The exhibited work is inspired by an experience during which the artist came across a liturgical orthodox image.

Journal Entry Extract, 20/02/2022: "I noticed there was a small orthodox icon of Saint Sebastian hanging above his bed. It caught my eye, then the strangest thing occurred. It started moving, breathing. Meanwhile, I forgot I had a body. The icon gradually overtook more and more space in my conscience, until it covered his whole bedroom, the entire existing space. And gravity vanished. I was caught in layers of gold. The piece crosses the boundaries between the defined and the blurred, the two- dimensional and material, the spiritual and earthly sphere. It flows into a transcendental experience. The viewer is invited to come in direct physical and intimate contact with the iconographical work by lifting the canvas and thus enter its layers."