Artists

Monika Dillier

Press release

The exhibition presents an interplay of Monika Dillier’s works from the 1980s and 1990s through to today, from her early acrylic paintings to recent watercolour drawings and collages. This development also marks a movement in different directions, with interweavings of now and then: Dillier’s newest bone drawings correspond with her early, excessive body images. The orientation toward the female body resonates with her view of bones, death, and writing, as expressed in the poem Hand by the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska. The artist framed it in a text-based work and, from its first line (“Twenty-seven bones”), drew inspiration for a series of new works. In these, bones can be discerned that are at the same time flowers and signs of writing—letters.

Dillier’s notebooks, also presented here, are an important and independent part of her artistic practice. The Paris notebooks were created during a residency at the Cité internationale des Arts, in the studio of Visarte Switzerland in Paris. They follow the concept of walking on foot in the four cardinal directions in order to approach an unfamiliar city. Viewing the notebooks and listening to the accompanying conversations draws the viewer imaginatively into these walks.

(machine translated)