Susanne Keller. Hinterkammer des Auges

Zurich artist Susanne Keller describes her art as the "materialization of a poetic network of thoughts". This year's exhibition at the Thun-Panorama, Susanne Keller. Hinterkammer des Auges, makes this statement tangible for the general public by means of delicately playful peep-box objects, spherical photographs and poems.

Before people began to lose themselves in the endlessness of the virtual world via small screens, they quenched their thirst for discovery with physical images, books or installations. These research spaces were perhaps more limited, but the search for stories and details was all the more deliberate. The exhibition that Kunstmuseum Thun is showing in the glass extension of the Thun-Panorama in the 2026 season is a reminder of the decelerating power of quiet observation and the discovery and questioning of unexpected perspectives.

In view of the proximity to the panorama painting by Marquard Wocher, the oldest surviving circular painting in the world and the largest work in the Kunstmuseum Thun collection, Susanne Keller has adopted the idea of the stage, of staging, for her exhibition in the Thun-Panorama. She selected the Guckkasten series (2007) from her extensive oeuvre. This invites the public to explore circus, opera or fairground worlds through peepholes and viewing slits. Almost like Wocher's hidden object picture, which gives the viewer a fascinating insight into the hustle and bustle of Thun around 1814.

The multidisciplinary artist is showing her black-and-white photo series Körner Gaumen mundet (2005-2007) as a complement or contrast to this. The fact that the pictures were taken on hot summer days under a steel-blue sky can only be guessed at. Due to their atmospheric blurriness and their selective under- and overexposure, the photographs can be associated with hazy memories of the past, the repressed or the forgotten. In her texts and poems, which can be read on the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, Susanne Keller also takes up artistic leitmotifs such as human vision and perception, the artistic working process and the scenery.

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.