Bildhalle

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This series is about seeing for the first time, before the world has settled into clear objects. Each work is built from many photographs made through small shifts in distance and viewpoint. I move through the subject like a puzzle, from corner to corner. The image forms slowly, not as a single capture, but as an accumulation of partial views. Joost Vandebrug Not Yet The Image brings together new works that explore how images emerge through perception, memory, and time. Built from multiple photographs taken through subtle shifts in distance and viewpoint and assembled across cards, plates, and varied materials, the works resist instant recognition and instead form gradually through fragments and partial views. Inspired by early photographic experimentation and Karl Blossfeldt’s systematic plant studies, Vandebrug adopts a similarly attentive, serial gaze, but turns it toward the unstable, the in-between, and the not-yet-named. Rather than presenting fixed representations, the works stage seeing as an active process: images unfold slowly, inviting the viewer to assemble them piece by piece, as if encountering the world before it settles into certainty. By presenting fragments that invoke acts of zooming or close looking, the works offer heightened detail while simultaneously requiring the viewer to recontextualize and mentally (re)assemble the whole. We look forward to welcoming you to Bildhalle and to sharing an exhibition where seeing becomes an active, reflective, and deliberately incomplete act.

Inka & Niclas, Adam Jeppesen, Joost Vandebrug and Douglas Mandry approach nature not as a static subject but as a dynamic collaborator – fragile, ever-changing and ephemeral. In their work, nature becomes both material and metaphor, explored through diverse processes that push the boundaries and possibilities of photography. Inka & Niclas FI/SE In their lens-based practice, Inka & Niclas delve into the over-consumed and oversaturated portrayals of nature within our visual culture. The artist duo investigates how our relationship with the natural world is shaped – and often distorted – by the camera lens. Their work reflects a constant urge to question conventions and playfully explore what photography can become when it encounters new materials, forms and possibilities. Adam Jeppesen DK In the series Tanks (2016-present), Adam Jeppesen suspends cyanotype-printed fabric in oil-filled tanks, blurring the line between image and object. His practice consistently pushes the boundaries of photography, approaching the medium not as an end but as a starting point. Where early camera-less photography often halted at the flat image, Jeppesen treats the cyanotype as the beginning of a broader, spatial investigation. Though rooted in photographic processes, his work moves decisively toward the sculptural. Joost Vandebrug NL At the heart of Joost Vandebrug’s pracitce lie imagined landscapes composed of fragments of visual memories of different travels and places. His images take shape as quiet, intuitive constructions marked by vulnerability, ephemerality, and the poetry of the everyday. Vandebrug embraces imperfections, treating them as integral to the creative process. His prints – often made on handmade Japanese washi, Nepali, or baryta paper – reveal the mechanics of their making and reflect the sensitivity that runs through his work. Douglas Mandry CH Collecting old images of Swiss glaciers from the early 20th century, Mandry transferred them onto pieces of geotextile through the traditional process of lithography. The fabric had previously been used in the Alps to protect the glaciers during a season on the ice. Thus, fading memories of the Golden Age of Swiss tourism become part of current attempts to preserve a past that no longer exists. Together, these artists open a dialogue around nature as something seen, shaped, and felt – not merely documented, but transformed. Rejecting permanence and perfection, their works embrace fragility, artifice, and transformation as essential elements of a contemporary visual language.

The exhibition Movement traces the decades-long, dynamic, and ever-evolving career of Swiss photographer René Groebli — an artist who never stood still and continually tempted the new, previously unseen, without ever confining himself to one single style, genre, or technique. Groebli’s oeuvre is so multifaceted that it cannot be understood through a few iconic images alone. It encompasses dynamic street photography full of motion blur, experiments in color and montage techniques, inventive industrial and commissioned works, as well as intimate studies of life, love, and bodily forms in black and white. If there is one constant throughout his oeuvre, it is a clearly recognizable, unquenchable thirst for new forms of expression. One of his earliest photographs – taken freehand from his bicycle over the handlebars – already reveals the artist’s early fascination with speed and stands symbolically for a career that would follow no linear path, always moving slightly ahead of prevailing formal conventions. Groebli works and feels lyrically and intuitively. Soon after beginning his studies at the Zurich School of Applied Arts under Hans Finsler, whose teaching was rooted in the cool, static aesthetics of Neue Sachlichkeit, he quickly broke away, drawn instead to the vibrant energy of Zurich’s streets, clubs, and stages. Like a filmmaker, he seeks to make the essence of movement visible within still images, willingly sacrificing perfect sharpness, embracing elements of chance, and thereby capturing not only motion but also emotion. This subjective, free approach to photography reveals a cinematic sensibility that stands in stark contrast to the strict formalism of postwar Swiss photography. Thus, Groebli’s 1949 photo essay Rail Magic, published when he was only 22, initially went largely unnoticed. Transforming a steam train journey from Paris to Basel into a swirling, smoke-filled, grainy celebration of speed, the series is now regarded as a brilliant precursor to subjective photography. Equally evocative is the poetic and intimate series The Eye of Love, created in 1952 during the belated honeymoon with his wife, Rita. Initially misunderstood and dismissed as scandalous, the series has since gained international recognition for what it truly is: a tender love poem in pictures — created by an artist who observes his wife with a gentle gaze and captures the poetry of everyday gestures. The exhibition Movement invites the viewer to experience Groebli’s photography as he lived it: as a dynamic, centrifugal force that captures movement in all its forms – physical, emotional, and artistic. It reveals an artist for whom photography was never merely a means of documenting the world, but a living, ever-changing medium – meant to move the viewer.

The Art of Now: A Retrospective is a comprehensive exploration of contemporary art, featuring works from over 50 international artists. The exhibition will showcase a diverse range of mediums and styles, offering visitors a unique opportunity to engage with the most exciting and innovative art being created today.

Forthcoming exhibition featuring René Groebli's work. The artist René Groebli will be present at the vernissage on December 12, 2025 in Zurich.