HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

L23 RESIDENCY FINAL EXHIBITION
20.08.
30.08.2020

WITH
JANEK ACKERMANN, MITCHELL ANDERSON, JÈSUS ANDRES, STÉPHANIE BAECHLER, DIMITRI BÄHLER, BRIGHAM BAKER, KAROLIN BRAEGGER, AGLAIA BRÄNDLI, BREADED ESCALOPE, TOBIAS BRUNNER, FRANCESCO CAGNIN, ANDRIU DEPLAZES, DO NOTHING CURATING IN COLLABORATION WITH ANA ALENSO, NINA EMGE, FRITZ JAKOB GRÄBER, JASMINE GREGORY, MARIE GRIESMAR, CHRISTIAN INDERGAND & MAX EHRENGRUBER, SEMUEL LALA, IVY MONTEIRO, SVETA MORDOVSKAYA, NATALIE PORTMAN, PHILIP ORTELLI, PHILÉMON OTT, THAO PHAN DANG, PLUEER SMIT, MICHAËL REINHOLD, ADRIEN ROVERO, TRACY SEPTEMBER, TINO SEUBERT, DORIS DEHAN SON, STELLA, ILARIA VINCI, STUDIO VLORA

Hope Springs Eternal was the concluding event of the L23 Residency—an artistic residency project developed in the context of the temporary occupation of an empty building in Zurich’s city centre. Initiated in March 2020, L23 Residency was conceived as an improvised form of emergency hospitality, providing studio spaces at no cost to young art professionals during the lockdown.

In the spirit of extending the notion of hospitality to the resident’s respective communities and towards a broader audience, the exhibition presented not only projects developed by the residents during the past months but also recent works by guest artists. Just like the residency, the exhibition encompasses—from visual arts to design, fashion and performance—a plurality of approaches, techniques, and discourses while simultaneously celebrating the fluidity between disciplines and individual experiences.

Hope Springs Eternal offers a glimpse into what could be seen as a campsite situation that emerged organically out of a collaborative desire to act. The exhibition is intended as a form of unpolished dialogue centred around individual perspectives and transitory conditions. The exhibition title echoes the optimistic mind-set that characterised the entire L23 Residency project, that is, to see in spontaneous and flexible actions an opportunity to provide local and temporary answers to questions too knotty to solve. In this sense, it acknowledges creation and exchange as essential factors of hope in uncertain times while contemplating the importance of ephemeral, nomadic and fragmentary responses to ever-shifting realities.