We are excited to inaugurate our newly renovated gallery space at Rämistrasse 5 with a solo exhibition by Renée Levi. Maude, the artist’s second exhibition at the gallery, marks the first time Renée Levi shows works she considers “precarious”. Emancipating from her signature scribbles and color-block compositions on more than large-scale canvases, Renée Levi produced a series of new works of small and large formats that seem to reflect the artist’s search for equilibrium through a visible economy of means. Yet, the notion of balance in the context of this new body of works remains unstable and open to interpretation. For someone like Renée Levi, who dedicated a lifetime to art-making, balance results from a constellation of forms, colors and textures that can only be grasped beyond language and intellect.

Visually, the technique, composition and colors of the works on display reflect the artist’s will to allow the viewer to grasp the sensual materiality that does each work, in which transparent priming reveals the weave of the linen while the raw marks of the brush or roller on the canvas show the type tool, as well as the amount of paint used to translate a gesture. By leaving an essential surface of some of the works unpainted, the artist reflects on the conditions under which a work of art is deemed complete, a fundamental inquiry within and beyond the definition of art. – Extract from Press Release by Elise Lammer

Renée Levi was born 1960, in Istanbul and grew up in Aargau. Today, she lives and works in Basel. After studying architecture at the HTL Muttenz/Basel, she studied at the Zurich School of Art and Design. In 1998, she started working together with Marcel Schmid as a studio partner. Recent solo exhibitions include at Öktem Aykut (Instanbul, 2022); PHILIPPZOLLINGER (2021); Villa du Parc (Annemasse, 2021); Musée d’Art, Histoire et Archéologie d’Évreux (2020); Biennale de Lyon (2019); Museum Langmatt (Baden, 2019); Istituto Svizzero Milan (2019) and at Galerie Freymond-Guth (Basel, 2017). In addition, the artist has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2023); Centre d'art Pasquart (Biel, 2022); MAMCO (Geneva, 2021); Istituto Svizzero Rome (2019) or at Kunstverein Munich (2015). Renée Levi has received several awards, including the Prix de la Société des Arts de Genève, Arts Visuel, in 2019, or the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2002. Moreover, Levi is the winner of the public art competition of the Parliament Building in Bern, Switzerland. The project will be inaugurated September 12, at 18:48.

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