Basel | ArtRegion: Basel - Oberrhein

Der TANK des Institut Kunst Gender Natur

Peter Klein: Blumen blühen, wo bist du?

10. – 19. Juni 2022

Every year, coinciding with Art Basel we present a special project at der TANK, the exhibition space of the Institute Art Gender Nature at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel. This year’s exhibition reunites around thirty paintings by Peter Klein. Blumen blühen, wo bist du? constitutes Klein’s first institutional exhibition in Switzerland and one of his first shows in many years. The works represent two families of works—homes and flowers—he did in the 1970s and 1980s, before he arrived in Ernen, Valais, in Switzerland.

Both, his biography—born as a German in Romania, educated in Bucharest and Munich, and in “exile” since the 1980s in Switzerland—and the subject matter of his work seem especially relevant today. Borders that do not necessarily overlap with the identities of the inhabitants of a place, cultural shifts and aesthetic research constitute the basis of a deeply moving artistic production. Also displacement is to blame for his almost invisible presence in the exhibition programs. Peter Klein rooted his life and his practice in a small community in the mountains of Switzerland where he has been active as an artist and as an art teacher but not necessarily seeking for being part of exhibition programs in the Swiss centers. For this reason, this presentation constitutes a unique opportunity to discover his work but also to be the witness of a way of believing in the rural that has been so present in our conversations since the Covid-19 pandemic.