Träumende Dinge – Heidi Bucher, Miriam Cahn, Meret Oppenheim, Hannah Villiger, Ilse Weber i.a.

“I would once like to paint something that I’ve never seen before”, said Ilse Weber. This describes the emergence of somnambulistic pictorial worlds in the work of this artist. At the same time, it points us to the heart of the exhibition “Träumende Dinge” (“Dreaming Things”) and to the proximity to Surrealism of many of the artists exhibited here. Bodies and objects are alienated, detached from their context, and charged with new meaning.

With “Träumende Dinge”, the Kunsthaus Zug is placing the œuvres of women artists centre-stage. Its collection has historically been predominantly focused on male artists, though it also holds a large number of exceptional works by women. Those being exhibited here include works by Heidi Bucher, Trudi Demut, Miriam Cahn, Irma Ineichen, Meret Oppenheim, Lou Stengele, Josephine Troller, Hannah Villiger and Ilse Weber.

Engaging with things and bodies, with things found and things transformed: this is the theme that runs through the whole exhibition. Familiar things are here transformed by the artistic process – things ranging from everyday objects to those that bear symbolic meaning. The result is a surreal poetics of things that affords these objects a voice and a life of their own.

Curated by Jana Bruggmann