Lugano, an exhibition on the lake of our unconscious at the Bally Foundation

“Our walks by the lake, hand in hand, are still there.” It is true, as Banana Yoshimoto observes in his novel “The Lake” (2005) that the essence of the world is enclosed in that body of water. He stands still and placidly reflects human transience. But if the effect of that lake is multiplied through a 1930s villa crouched over those gentle waves, set only, as Manzoni would have liked, between water, mountains and sky, and inside that villa a work by art that speaks of that depth, of those reflections and of the unfathomable nature of the lake itself, an exhibition-museum is born.

It is «Un lac Inconu», an unknown, unconscious lake, this is the title of the exhibition that the Bally Foundation has chosen to inaugurate Villa Heleneum, its new physical headquarters – after 17 years of activity – in Lugano. Liberty jewel with the entrance steps lapped by the water, crowned by the San Giorgio, Generoso and San Salvatore mountains and by a luxuriant garden protected by the Superintendency.

The exhibition – strongly desired by the director Vittoria Matarrese and by the CEO of Bally Nicolas Girotto – brings together twenty international artists called to question the relationship between man and nature, and between man and his unconscious, his cracks, its gigantic potential. Names such as Rebecca Horn, Vito Acconci, Willa Wasserma, Oliver Beer, Yannick Haenel, Haim Steinbach, Caroline Bachmann, Emilija ŠKarnulytė, propose a poetic and philosophical walk between submerged and emerged landscapes, an attempt to give shape to the water that slips between the fingers yet digs a furrow: a proposal for connection with oneself and with the world.

The time of a summer
This exhibition could constitute a permanent collection given the level of the works and the relevance to the place, but instead it will only last until 24 September. A summer in which it will be worthwhile to take a train to Lugano and get to Villa Heleneum – owned by the municipality, but now granted for a suitable time to the Foundation, perhaps the most beautiful location in Lugano – and visit an exhibition that will be free until on the first floor, just to allow everyone, perhaps after a swim in the lake, that magic. And it is already a great sight given that the first work is a large window as big as a cinema screen, which overlooks the lake, framed by two gigantic lake cypresses. Above that crystal, focused on the Great Beauty, stands the inscription «Close your eyes» an invitation signed by the artist Haim Steinbach which sounds like a provocation, but in reality, it is not. The work invites an intimate and inner research: abandoning the external landscape to look and see all that is hidden inside each of us.

The modern undine
The same game of intellectual and enthralling references with the work «Sunken Cities» by Emilija ŠKarnulytė, ((1987, Vilnius, Lithuania) the mermaid archaeologist, the modern undine, artist-woman-fish-guide of the museum. The artist explores in a film the depths of the Gulf of Naples among the ruins of a ghost town. She swims dressed as a mermaid on the submerged ruins of the former seaside resort of Baia. And watching her darting on that past covered by the present in the form of a wave, one wonders: what do the deep waters hide?And again: what will survive of humanity?

The Bally Artist Awards 2023
The exhibition was inaugurated on 20 April and on the same evening the Bally Artist Award 2023 was awarded, which went to the Brazilian Pedro Wirz (1981) for the installation «Immunité diplomatique». Wirz won with a project that questions class prerogatives, hierarchical power and archetypal and immutable positions in society. By winning this prize, the artist has won an exhibition at the Masi in Lugano which will be inaugurated on 3 June 2023: thirteen sculptures that impersonate a commanding personality (a rabbi, a president, a Pope and so on) will interact with visitors almost become obstacles. And the message, even here, is very clear and disturbing.