Inspiration is everywhere, especially on your own doorstep
For the exhibition „Inspired by Switzerland„, 12 Swiss designers were asked to develop projects explicitly inspired by local reference objects. But what is typically Swiss? And is today’s multicultural and globalized Swiss Confederation itself still Swiss?
A piece of wood from the forest, a folded piece of paper from the studio or the Swiss railroad station clock’s red second hand served as a starting point, among other things.
The 12 projects and the corresponding sources of inspiration show how differently broad and versatile creative design processes can be applied. Visitors are invited to get inspired by the creative potential of their own design culture. After all, Goethe already wrote in the poem „Memory“: Do you wish to roam farther and farther? See the good that lies so near.
With projects by: Dimitri Bähler, Gabriela Chicherio, Fritz Jakob Gräber, Laure Gremion, Valentina Labitzke, Bertille Laguet, Adrien Rovero, Fabio Rutishauser, Solá Solá Studios (Isabell Solá-Gatzen & Kyle Solá), Sibylle Stöckli, Nora Wagner, Robert Adrian Wettstein
„Inspired by Switzerland“ is conceived as a two-part mirrored exhibition for Moscow and Switzerland. In Moscow the inspirational objects are exhibited and the projects are shown as photographs. In Switzerland, on the other hand, the original projects are physically on display, complemented by images of the reference objects.
Background
During my one-month stay in Moscow in March 2019, I realized how much our own product heritage shapes us – forms, colours, patterns, materials and combinations of these have accompanied us since childhood. Constructivist, but also folkloristic elements are repeatedly quoted in contemporary Russian design. In Switzerland too, designers call on references from their own design history or their surroundings.
It was precisely this aspect that I wanted to explore, when I was asked by the All-Russian Decorative Art Museum in Moscow in summer 2020 to organize a small guest exhibition on contemporary Swiss design, parallel to the exhibition of the Russian Design Prize.
Supported by: Pro Helvetia Moscow
INSPIRED BY SWITZERLAND @ DESIGN DAYS
5 – 15 November 2020
Viceversa Gallery
3 rue Mercerie, 1003 Lausanne
www.viceversa.ch
https://www.designdays.ch/
INSPIRED BY SWITZERLAND @ OKRO
from 20. November until end of 2020
OKRO, Design & Craft
Tittwiesenstrasse 21, 7000 Chur
https://okro.com
