Opening Friday, 10 October, 2025, 7 p.m.,
exhibition until 22 November, 2025.
At the last Art Salon in Zurich, Galerie Obrist arranged this exhibition in cooperation with Zurich’s Galerie Fabian Walter, essentially as a reciprocal artist exchange. Hanna Roeckle’s work occupies a distinctive and unconventional position in the Swiss art discourse. Many of her large-scale sculptures are installed in public and private outdoor spaces, although the majority of her works are designed for interior spaces, which is also the focus of this exhibition.
Roeckle’s works exist both figuratively and literally between painting and sculpture. They are based on spatial structures and serial systems, whose constructive clarity gives way to a sensual flow of color. The objects resemble models of crystalline figures or chemical compounds, and their titles also evoke terms from the natural sciences: Fluorite, Quasar, or Protostar.
Roeckle’s works exist both figuratively and literally between painting and sculpture. With their lacquered, mirrored surfaces made of fiberglass composite, the sculptures present themselves in luminous shades of blue, purple, pink, copper, light green, and gold, which shift into other tones depending on the angle of the light. At the same time, the sculptures also absorb the colors of their surroundings. The effect of these shimmering colors ultimately unfolds in the eye of the beholder. This phenomenon allows the sculptures to seemingly transcend their own materiality. This effect is created through the use of dichroic lacquers in shades that were specially developed and mixed for Hanna Roeckle’s works according to her specifications.
In contrast, Jürgen Paas’s jukeboxes, with their clear design language and meticulous craftsmanship, echo Roeckle’s works. Here, too, the dominant feature is the diversity of colors. While the works are essentially paintings, they are not created with brush and paint. Instead, they are painted using industrially prefabricated materials, allowing the interplay of RAL colors to unfold three-dimensionally. Depending on the viewing angle, the relief reveals very different color compositions: from one side, a structure with broad stripes is visible, while from the other, a shimmering, polychrome atmosphere is revealed. While the half-profile view is dominated by a multicolored abundance, the front view displays a lightness of delicate, juxtaposed lines. This abundance of color creates unprecedented and surprising color juxtapositions. However straightforward and clear the structure may be, the depth of color and the color contrasts create a powerful visual and sensory appeal: one can hardly escape the pull of these dynamic works.
They change with our movement in front of them and are only completed through this movement of the viewer, and this is an important similarity with the works of Hanna Roeckle. The exhibition is titled CHANGING FOCUS: a component of both works is the necessary change of the viewer’s perspective and the movement in front of the picture, which causes the view, the form, and the color of the inherently static works to change endlessly. Therefore, the direct experience of the works is so essential: because they cannot be reduced to just one view or photographic reproduction. They demand action from the viewer; they must move in front of the works to experience their transformations from different perspectives. And that applies to all the works shown here.
Both Jürgen Paas and Hanna Roeckle have an extremely vibrant body of work that is constantly evolving, and has been for many years, and which is always worth revisiting. Art historical classifications are difficult to find for either of them; their work moves within a spectrum from Pop Art to Concrete Art, but ultimately, the terms don’t quite fit. This is because they are two highly individual and independent artistic positions that are rightly considered among the first rank in contemporary art.
