Off the Beaten Track

“The moment an idea takes shape, a concept is developed or a work is born, seems to me one of the most precious. As long as something exists as an idea, it is vague and fragile. Through its realisation, however, this fragility gains clarity; it becomes concrete and tangible. When an idea ultimately receives resonance – in art that would be an audience – its existence is completed by the perception it gains through it.” 

Lena Friedli

The English expression “off the beaten track” is used in a spatial-geographical context of remoteness. In the sense of ‘displacement’, ‘far fetched’, or ‘peculiar’, the expression can often be metaphorically used and serve many descriptive purposes. Whether it is in the perception of an object, a piece of architecture, a location or an action, again and again we come across things that irritate us despite a given context that is known to us. Something may be different, even though we know it: astoundingly new, somehow strange, surprising or perhaps even shocking.

The group exhibition Off the Beaten Track thus unifies the intimate moment in the studio with the manifested, real exhibitional context through a personal, profound glance into the respective artistic expression.

The exhibition raises the delightful challenge of bringing together things, which are normally separate from one another, into a rounded picture. The concept of the show is to reflect two different positions in an artist work. Every artist has a kind of identity in his technique, material or artistic layout. Off the beaten track wants to show the different, the unknown and a bit more personal point of view.

The exhibition is curated by Lena Friedli and Stefan von Bartha.