The gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by the Swiss artists Lutz & Guggisberg at the gallery in Lugano.

They will present Giardini di domani (Gardens of Tomorrow), a series of photographs of destroyed urban gardens where nature nevertheless proliferates and evolves: vegetables, fruits and flowers continue to grow, indifferent to the catastrophe that surrounds them, reclaiming the ground previously occupied by men. The artists have altered the large-format images through pictorial intervention to modify the scenes, at times in a delicate, almost invisible way, and in other cases with new creations and apparitions. The title of the show metaphorically and ironically refers to the often harmful impact of man on nature. Sheds, tools, tables, chairs, plastic basins in garish colors, rubber hoses: in the photographs everything seems uprooted, disrupted by the passage of a hurricane. The post-apocalyptic scenes suggest the effects of a natural catastrophe, or perhaps a violent act of destruction inflicted by human beings. Though dramatic, the images contain an intrinsic beauty, a harmonious composition of shapes and colors. Small lyrical details unexpectedly surface in connection with human elements, like a round table top that becomes an earthly moon, or with other natural items like the snowdrops and crocuses that appear amidst the rubble, onions sprouting under boards, a sleeping cat. These details bear witness to the process of destruction and rebirth, in which nature resumes its course, oblivious to the impact of an arrogant civilization.

The painted interventions on the printed images lead towards an ultra-photographic reality, generating a new possibly utopian dimension intrinsic to the creative process. In the non-linear narrative paths and nearly anarchic artistic approach of Lutz & Guggisberg – the result of free association and para-scientific analysis of reality – wit, paradox and play coexist with a mysterious ambivalence and a delicate sense of the subversive.

The project Giardini di domani was created in 2018 for an exhibition at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, and is now presented for the first time in Switzerland.

Andres Lutz (Wettingen, 1968) and Anders Guggisberg (Bienne, 1966) live and work in Zurich. Their important shows in museums and institutions include: Museum im Bellpark in Kriens in 2014, Centre d'Art Contemporain in Rennes and MUDAM in Luxembourg in 2013, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2010, Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris in 2009, Kunsthaus Aarau and Museum Folkwang in Essen in 2008. In 2014 they took part in the group show Gastspiel at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, and Telling Tales, Centre PasquArt, Biel/Bienne.