KÖRPERLICH

Hauser & Wirth opens its second exhibition at its Basel location which is a group showing of works by women artists. The exhibition is titled ‘Körperlich’, meaning ‘bodily’ in English.

August 30 – November 2, 2024

The exhibition explores the body’s role in the construction and expression of identity through works by Louise Bourgeois, Maria Lassnig, Meret Oppenheim, Alina Szapocznikow, Irène Zurkinden, Lee Lozano, Hannah Villiger and Carol Rama.

Although the emphasis is on the physiognomy of the body and its organs, the feelings portrayed within the works on view are those that emanate from deep inside: love, desire, fear, anger, hysteria—visceral emotions which reveal themselves through bodily expression. The works on display range from portraiture, depicting images of the nude body and representations of corporeal parts, to semi-abstract images that suggest bodily forms. Through their work, these artists pose questions about bodily integrity, about control of the body, asking ultimately who has power and autonomy over our bodies, especially those that are gendered as female.

While the work of the artists on view sometimes seek to celebrate the body and play on notions of beauty and gender according to the traditional portrayal of the body in art, they nevertheless problematise these depictions and explore layers of complexity to this tradition such as in the painting ‘Nue’(1934) by Irène Zurkinden, who also explores a variety of bodily movements in her expressive drawings. The artists presented challenge the tradition of the nude, expressing it often as a fractured, disintegrating and unstable body, as it appears in the watercolour works of Lassnig and the painting by Lozano.

Together, the artists in this exhibition grasp, investigate and express the complexities of the construction of self that comes from our bodies.