Exhibition «Komm Glüückck» — open art museum

With the exhibition Komm Glüückck, the open art museum, St. Gallen, presents works from its collection in which the interplay between word and image takes centre stage.

This diverse artistic practice raises fascinating questions: When is a thought expressed in language, and when does it take the form of an image? What can an image express that a text cannot – and vice versa? Particularly where words reach their limits, art helps to make feelings and experiences visible.

The exhibition brings together thoughts, greetings, poems and stories, typographic works and picture stories, art postcards, as well as conceptual explorations of language and vocabulary. The ways in which artists relate image and text to one another are revealed in a variety of forms: the word itself becomes an image, is inscribed within it, accompanies it or comments on it. The exhibition thus opens up a multifaceted approach to the interplay between seeing and reading, between linguistic expression and visual imagination.

These questions take on particular urgency, especially in an artistic practice where verbal expression can sometimes be difficult or where a theoretical framework is lacking. Images can speak where words fail. They bring feelings and experiences to life and are able to convey facts directly, whereas language inevitably conjures up its own internal images. Texts, on the other hand, can describe, differentiate and clarify what remains merely hinted at visually.

The exhibition highlights just how productive and multi-layered the connection between word and image is. In their interplay, both reinforce one another – whether in the clarification of an interpretation, in their openness, or in their ambivalence and paradox.