Helmhaus, ZĂŒrich
11.04â09.06.2025
Title: Passato Presente
With: Marisa Cornejo, Pascale Eiberle, Esther Ernst,
Mark Formanek, Michel Gilgen, Johanna MĂŒller,
Jos NĂ€pflin, Lea Schaffner, Jonathan Steiger, Sabine Troendle,
Franz Wanner, Olivia Wiederkehr, Uwe Wittwer
Curated by: Nathalie Killias and Cristiana Contu
Venue: Helmhaus, Limmatquai 31, 8001 ZĂŒrich
Dates: 11.04â09.06.2025
An exhibition that seeks the past in the present
The past cleaves to the present, as the title of this exhibition describes: [il] passato [Ăš] presente.As Augustine of Hippo remarked 1500 years ago, there is no past as such, only âa present of things pastâ as perceived by the mind. The past accompanies us as memory, because according to Novalis âall remembrance is the presentâ.
Memories can be vivid or fleeting, enduring or ephemeral, painful or imagined. Our lives are shaped by personal experience, but also by events that have entered the collective memory. The works by thirteen artists exhibited here sound out both the scope and the limits of remembrance. They address those traumatic experiences that sear our souls like sheets of paper. They define the whiff of suffering that surrounds us like an invisible veil, or they visualise the simultaneity of absence and presence. Even the yearning for the âgood old daysâ and for nostalgia itself is here reworked as art.
The exhibition is an invitation to ponder the many different ways in which we preserve the past â or detach ourselves from it.
