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Swiss artist Zilla Leutenegger combines murals, drawings, objects and video projections to create expansive installations and photographs. Her works surprise the viewer with their playfulness and ease. The exhibition in Bremen presented installations and drawings from a large complex of Sammlung Goetz holdings and complements it with many new works, some of which are being shown in Germany for the first time.
A few vigorous but concise lines are sufficient for Leutenegger to create her own world. In sketchily implied rooms, we often encounter the artist’s alter ego: the fictional Zilla. She is the sole protagonist, trying out various roles and identities. Childhood dreams and fantasies have just as much space here as do everyday situations: Zilla plays piano, work or simply reads a book. But the artist’s eyes let us see these superficially banal activities as perceptual events of a very special nature that can point beyond the here and now. Many of the works illustrate irony and subtle pictorial humor. Others are full of dense melancholy and suggest something that is absent. They appear to be snapshots, without storyline or dramaturgy, but with a narrative core that points out the existential conditions and possibilities of life.
