Exhibition «Stranger Than Paradise» open art museum

The carpet is rolled out a second time: at the center of Stranger Than Paradise is the monumental collage from the Olma special exhibition in 2025. In the museum, the carpet appears in a new context between paradisiacal harmony and broken idyll.

The motifs of the carpet collage come from the museum's collection and can be seen in their original form in the exhibition. They are complemented by other works that take up the theme of “paradise” in a variety of ways: romanticized nature, idealizations of rural life, images of longing, but also irritations and ruptures. When viewed together, the seemingly familiar cracks; harmony tips into the absurd, the idyll becomes fragile. The result is not a uniform image of paradise, but a polyphonic collage – like the carpet itself. The title Stranger Than Paradise refers to this ambivalence: paradise appears as a cultural motif and as a projection surface for individual imagery – as a place of longing, a retreat, and a stage for exuberant imagination, but at the same time as a fragile fiction. In naive art and art brut, paradise is a recurring motif, also as a place of longing for inner refuge.

The exhibition questions the idea of paradise as a harmonious natural idyll, an ideal couple, or a heavenly place. It shows that paradise is a fragile fiction. Works by Pietro Angelozzi, Anny Boxler, Aloïse Corbaz, Emil Graf, Hans Krüsi, and Konrad Zülle, among others, are on display.

In the cabinet, textile researcher Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols displays miniature textile gardens. Magnificently designed, they glisten and sparkle in the light. Their shadows allow the gardens to grow and fill the room. Here, one can lose oneself in the illusion of paradise. The hortus conclusus is a protected place of purity and beauty. In today's understanding of a mindfulness garden, it serves as a retreat into contemplative silence.