Patricia Low Contemporary Gstaad is delighted to present an exceptional group show of 12 interweaving female and non-binary positions from Europe and the US. The exhibition, whose title is inspired by the infamous line uttered by one of the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, features works by gallery artists as well as artists who will be exhibiting with the gallery for the first time; of them, WK Lyhne and Xenia Hausner are enjoying their first solo outings with the gallery this year, at Patricia Low Venezia.
The participating artists share a powerfully sensual approach to their respective disciplines, whether abstract painting, figurative vignettes, large-format photography or ceramics. Working within, and playing with, the traditions of landscape, portrait, and architectural painting, the works on view echo each other in subtly subversive ways. The “something woman*” of the title is a gesture towards ambiguity, of multitudes undefined but generously explored.
In LA-based artist Amy Bessone‘s painting Double Fantasy (Copper Bolt) (2023), archetypal feminine figures reminiscent of classical statues stand against a pulsating backdrop of purples and pinks. Bessone‘s palette and forms are contrasted with the contained frescos and baroque décor framed in Candida Höfer‘s photograph Reggia di Portici Portici I (2009). Höfer‘s palace of high culture, emptied of people, finds its own echo in Gretchen Scherer‘s painting of the interior of a Gothic revival library furnished abundantly with books and portraits. Though similarly empty of visitors, it too vibrates with a sense of latent activation. Awaiting activation too, perhaps, are the Prada wedge shoes in bronze, platinum and chrome from 2003 by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury, which simultaneously seduce with their metallic sheen as well as suggest the presence of an absent wearer.
In a palette close to that of Bessone, or the lush brushwork found in London-born Jemima Murphy‘s abstract paintings in vivid blossom hues, are the expressive paintings of storms both internal and external by Russian-born, Brooklyn-based Maria Kreyn. Recalling the turbulence of JMW Turner‘s romantic seascapes, Kreyn‘s roiling seas have their counterpoint in Hungarian painter Márta Kucsora‘s highly gestural abstract works, which are inspired by biological processes happening deep within nature and often monumental in scale. Zoe Williams‘ glazed ceramic Green Fingers (2019), meanwhile, has a similarly organic, sensual feel, reminiscent of a handheld mirror edged with moving serpentile forms.
There is sensuality and disquiet in British artist WK Lyhne‘s two-metre tall paintings of vertically positioned ewes. Titled Big Women I and 2 (both 2024), the works draw a parallel between the female form and the soft, pliable bodies of ewes. Also on view are paintings of bucolic sceneslaced with suggestions of violence on the female body, inspired by the archetypal porcelain figurines by Sèvres and Meissen and subverted. (Lyhne conceived the title of the exhibition, with its nod to Shakespeare’s witches, reclaiming for these marginal and maligned figures theirpowers of creativity and foresight.)
The body is further referenced in paintings that gesture towards intimacy and interiority. The depths of the self are referenced in Swiss artist Liliane Tomasko‘s charged abstract painting Portrait of the Self (On the Surface, Dreaming of What Lies Below) (2024). Elsewhere, Viennese artist Anouk Lamm Anouk‘s works on unprimed linen directly attract the viewer’s attention by opening up a portal into uncharted worlds of abstraction and figuration. In post/pre N°28 (2023), a bright and carefully applied circle serves as both an anchor and as an invitation to linger and enjoy the present moment. With Lesbian Jazz N°75 (2024), the viewer is contrastingly a bystander and witness to a moment of intimacy and trust, the painting part of a bigger body of work calling for visibility and equality, and intended to show the complexity of life. Fellow Austrian artist Xenia Hausner presents a brightly hued and figurative vision of two women embracing. One woman leans in lovingly while the other gazes at something outside of the frame, in an ambiguous staging of intricate relations – a metaphor, perhaps, for the interplay of all of the works here on view.
Vienna-born and based Anouk Lamm Anouk studied at the University of the Arts, Berlin, and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Recipient of the Main Prize of the 2021 Strabag Art Award, Anouk has exhibited in solo and group shows across Europe, staging their first museum solo show at the Frauenmuseum in Wiesbaden in Germany in 2023. Prior to this, they have exhibited at the Fundacja Stefana Gierowskiego in Warsaw, the Austrian Cultural Forum in London, and Belvedere 21 Museum in Vienna, among other locations.
Xenia Hausner (b. 1951 in Vienna, Austria) studied stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and worked as a set designer for much of her early career. Pivoting to painting in the early 1990s, Hausner has exhibited her work globally ever since, including the Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf, Switzerland, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the Pushkin State Museum in Moscow, the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg, Austria and the Shanghai Art Museum, among countless others. Hausner is a founding member of Vienna-based non-profit Women Without Borders.
Amy Bessone (b. 1970 in New York, USA) lives and works in Los Angeles and was educated in the US and Europe — at Barnard College, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Parsons Paris School of Design, and De Ateliers, Amsterdam. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows internationally, notably with Salon 94 and David Kordansky Gallery, as well as The Pit, Los Angeles; Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Bessone‘s solo show Our Secret Garden launched the opening of Patricia Low Venezia in 2023.
Márta Kucsora (b. 1979 in Szeged, Hungary) was educated at Montclair State University, New Jersey and at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, where she now lives and works. She has exhibited at home and internationally since 2007, including solo shows at the Kunsthalle Budapest and Kálmán Makláry Fine Arts, Budapest; Postmasters Gallery, New York; and The Concept Space, London. She was recently included in group exhibitions at CoBrA Gallery, Shanghai and Postmasters Roma. Kucsora also exhibited as part of the 2023 Binálé in Budapest.
Candida Höfer (b. 1944 in Eberswalde, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. Famously studying photography under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the 1970s, Höfer‘s extensive list of major solo exhibitions in important institutions worldwide includes shows at the Louvre in Paris, the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Kunsthalle Basel, among many others. Recent solo shows have taken place at the Macao Museum of Art (2023) and at the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, California (2022). In 2003, Höfer represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and accolades, including, most recently, the 2024 Käthe Kollwitz Prize, in addition to becoming a Lucie Award Honoree in 2022. In 2018, she was recognised for her Outstanding Contribution to Photography at the Sony World Photography Awards. Her work is held in major collections around the globe, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Tate Modern in London, to name just a few.
Gretchen Scherer (b. 1979 in Indianapolis, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn. Scherer took her BFA at the University of Illinois Chicago and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City, and has undertaken residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Vermont Studio Center and Governors Island Art Fair. She won a GRAF travel grant to Berlin and has been exhibited in galleries including Richard Heller in Los Angeles, Taymour Grahne Projects in London and at Monya Rowe in New York, which represents her work.
Jemima Murphy (b. 1992 in London, UK) has a BA in Russian Language from the University of Bristol and an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School. She held a solo show at Edji Gallery in Brussels in 2023, and has exhibited her paintings in galleries including Mint Gallery in Munich and Cynthia Corbett in London. She was included in Almine Rech’s online exhibition Wish, curated by collector Nathalie Baum in 2023. Her work is held in the Midas Collection, Los Angeles, the Green Family Art Foundation, Texas, and Not Another Art Club, London among others.
Liliane Tomasko (b.1967 in Zurich, Switzerland) lives and works in London. She holds an MA in Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, also London. She has exhibited her work internationally, including at the Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, New York State, the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Albertina Museum in Vienna. In 2024 she will have solo shows at Kerlin Gallery in Dublin and Bechter Kastowsky in Vienna. She will also be included in the group show Risky Business at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles.
W.K. Lyhne (b. in London, UK) is an artist and researcher. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, London and is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Chelsea College of Arts and the University of Oxford, with a focus on the maternal behaviours of animals and humans. She has also taken RIBA Architecture Parts I and II at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture. Her work has been exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the former Zabludowicz Collection in London, and Hales Gallery, also London, among others. She is a co-founder of the Sequested Art Prize for self-portraiture.
Zoe Williams (b.1983 in Salisbury, UK) lives between Marseille and London. She has a Masters of Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art and a BA in Art and Visual Culture from the University of the West of England Bristol’s School of Arts. She is represented by Ciaccia Levi and has exhibited her work at the gallery’s Paris and Milan locations. Williams has undertaken residencies including at the FLUXUS Magnetic Residency at Villa Arson in Nice and won Spike Island Bristol’s 2009 Rootstein Hopkins Artist’s Award. Her work is held in the collections of FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine La Méca in Bordeaux and the Collezione Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin.
Maria Kreyn (b. 1987 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) lives and works in Brooklyn. She received a Double Major in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Chicago and is self-taught as a painter. Her work has been exhibited at the Hole, Freight + Volume, and Lyons Wier Gallery, all in New York City; and in museums including Hillsdale College of Art in Michigan, California Lutheran University, and New Museum Los Gatos, California, among others. In 2021, she created the site-specific permanent installation The Shakespeare Cycle at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in Covent Garden, London.
Sylvie Fleury (b. 1961 in Geneva, Switzerland) has been making work that plays with and challenges the lure of consumerism for over three decades. Educated at the Germain School of Photography in New York, she has shown her work extensively around the world, most recently in solo shows at the Kunst Museum Winterthur in Switzerland (2023), at Sprüth Magers in London (2023), the Bechtler Stiftung in Uster, Switzerland (2022) and the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin, Italy (2022), among many others. Opening this Spring is the solo exhibition Yes to All at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands.