Featured Events in Geneva in March, 2024 (June Updated)

Experience the magic of Eclipse Paint Night with Heather Clark in Geneva on March 28, 2024, at 32 N Broadway. Immerse yourself in an evening filled with creativity and inspiration as you unleash your inner artist under the guidance of the talented Heather Clark. The event promises a unique opportunity to explore your artistic side while socializing with like-minded individuals in a vibrant atmosphere. With tickets priced at a reasonable $25, this is an affordable way to indulge in a night of artistry and self-expression. Join Heather Clark for an unforgettable evening of painting, mingling, and fun at 32 North Broadway, Geneva, OH 44041. Seize this chance to create a masterpiece of your own while basking in the eclipse-themed ambiance set to ignite your imagination. Mark your calendars for Eclipse Paint Night with Heather Clark and get ready to let your creativity shine!

Paul Thek (1933–1988), one of the most distinctive American artists of the late 20th century, steadfastly refused to conform to the dominant movements of his time. Working on the fringes of Pop art and Minimalism in the 1960s, he developed new forms of representation with the human body as his subject. Thek came to prominence in the early 1960s for his (later renamed )—body fragments represented as chunks of flesh, sculpted from colored wax and encased in Plexiglas boxes. He showed them at Stable Gallery and Pace Gallery, two leading New York art venues of the era. But the limited recognition his work gained at home, coupled with his aversion for the US art system, prompted Thek to distance himself from American society and spend most of his time in Europe, especially Italy and the Netherlands. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thek produced a series of temporary, immersive, collaborative installations based around the universal and symbolic motif of the pyramid. At the same time, he rekindled his passion for drawing and painting, which remained central to his practice until his death from AIDS in 1988. Between 1969 and 1975, Thek spent part of each year on the Italian island of Ponza. The experience opened his eyes to the possibility of a simple life of both ecstasy and pantheism, which inspired a series of paintings on newspaper representing the infinite expanse of the ocean and the natural elements, reflecting a sense of reconnection with the origins of creation. In the 1980s, Thek’s paintings captured his growing interest in mysticism, nurtured during frequent retreats at monasteries in Vermont. A spiritual and deeply religious man, he was heavily influenced by the mystic writings of Saint Augustine and Meister Eckhart, among others. Switzerland played a prominent role in bringing Thek’s work to a wider audience, with the artist receiving support from Harald Szeemann and Jean-Christophe Ammann. However, his pieces have not been exhibited in a Swiss museum since 1996, when the traveling show was hosted at the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kunsthalle in Zurich. The current exhibition at MAMCO adds a new chapter to this history, taking a fresh look at the work of this unique figure of US counterculture, whose art defies classification. It features a representative selection of Thek’s pieces from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, showcasing the diverse forms of expression—sculpture, painting, drawing, and engraving—that characterized his artistic practice. The exhibition explores the indivisible link between the body and the spirit, between the sacred and the profane, between nature and technology, between life and death—the very oppositions that permeate Thek’s art and make his unparalleled body of work a form of initiation journey. Exhibition curated by Valérie Da Costa, in collaboration with Françoise Ninghetto

Romanian-born artist Paul Neagu (1938–2004) worked first as an electrician and then as a topographer in his native Bucharest. After teaching himself philosophy and geometric drawing, he went on to study classical art at the Nicolae Grigorescu Academy of Fine Arts. He then spent some time traveling and exhibiting his works within the Soviet Union and later in Western Europe. In 1970, Neagu moved permanently to London with the help of Scottish curator Richard Demarco. Alongside his work as a practicing artist, Neagu taught at several of the city’s art schools, where his students included Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Tony Cragg, and Marc Camille Chaimowicz. Before settling in the UK, Neagu developed a deliberately restrictive sculptural practice, using a narrow range of inexpensive materials such as matchboxes, cardboard, wood, and leather to create a series of box-like structures, some of which were hinged. These pieces were exhibited in the streets of Bucharest, as captured in the 1969 film . In his , published in Edinburgh in 1969 and inspired by his anthroposophical readings, Neagu set out the theoretical principles that would inform his future practice—a vision of art that is experienced with the five senses and that calls for humans to be at one with their environment. This approach is reflected in his series: honeycombed grid patterns divide the sensitive parts of the human body—fingers, hands, lips, ears, breasts—or, sometimes, the entire body, into hollow, rectangular cells. Overlaid with a geometric grid in this way, the human figure becomes part of a system that Neagu named the “Generative Art Code,” reflecting his belief that our philosophical and social experiences are shaped by the dynamic interplay between three different aspects of our existence: our primal instincts (represented by the triangle), the order and rationality of Cartesian society (the rectangle), and the self-revelation that comes when we are freed from the shackles of norms and constraints (the circle). This emancipation can only be achieved through movement: jumping, dancing, and “going tornado”—a recurring theme in Neagu’s work. In 1972, having laid these theoretical foundations, Neagu established the Generative Art Group, a collective in whose name he signed a catalog and a number of works despite being the only non-fictitious member. The other four members, who were each given a name and a backstory, represented individual parts of a greater whole. The most pivotal decade of Neagu’s career started in the early 1970s. His works were exhibited three times—in 1972, 1976 and 1981—at the Rivolta gallery in Lausanne, with which he had a close personal relationship. For each of those shows Neagu took a holistic approach, also designing the decor and staging elements. The exhibition at MAMCO features a substantial body of engravings and drawings produced by Neagu for the Lausanne-based gallery, as well as a collection of archive documents provided by the Rivolta family. It pays tribute to a singular artist who preferred to stay out of the limelight but who, in his own unassuming way, made a lasting impact on the European art scene. Exhibition curated by Elisabeth Jobin With the support of the Rivolta gallery archives and The Paul Neagu Estate (UK)

Hsu studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before moving to New York in 1979 to focus on his art. He landed a part-time night job as a word processor at a Wall Street law firm, where he worked with the early use of the screen in word processing, giving him first-hand insight into the interaction between user and machine. On his off-hours, he began the exploration of how to visually convey the situation of his body interacting with the computer screen. The diversity of materials that Hsu employed (wood, vinyl cement compound, ceramic tiles, polystyrene, resin, rubber) constituted his aesthetic vocabulary at the time, bringing an unsettling sense of reality to the notion of the interface: the skin, membranes and screens where information and perception meet – or take shape. Hsu was then one of the few artists exploring the concept of human-machine hybridization. His pieces appear as if made flesh, covered with skin, embedded with architectural details (windows, ventilation grids, drain holes). The result – a sensual but injured body-like form affixed to electronic circuits – is suggestive of a metamorphosis in progress: these objects are brimming with potential and brooding with a sense of menace, as if something could burst out at any moment, or as if a transformation might take place. From the 1990s onward, Hsu starts a teaching career and withdraws from the limelight. He creates silkscreen prints on canvas before marking the dawn of the digital age by embracing Photoshop in early 2000. Abandoning his earlier practice of making art by hand, he turned to working on screen, producing works on canvas using digital imaging with wide-format printing and the use of silicone. At a time when technology is increasingly an extension of the body, the presence of machines in Hsu’s oeuvre is becoming ever vaguer and more unclear: skin and screen intermingle, merge and combine until, eventually, they become one. Exhibition curated by Lionel Bovier and Elisabeth Jobin, in collaboration with Secession, Vienna With the support of the Pictet Group Foundation

Erica Pedretti (1930–2022) was born and grew up in Šternberk, Moravia (modern-day Czech Republic). In 1945, she arrived in Switzerland as a war refugee. She studied at the Zurich School of Art and Design before having to emigrate to New York in 1950, where she worked as a goldsmith. The patterns and motifs that were staples of Pedretti’s trade would appear time and again in a body of work spanning more than seven decades. She developed a special interest in fish and birds, which fascinated her on account of both their freedom of movement and the natural elements—water and air—through which they moved. Over the years, Pedretti developed an artistic practice marked by hybridization: bodies and beings (animals, plants, humans, and celestial creatures) imbued with allusions to notions of otherness and exile. Pedretti returned to Switzerland in 1952, settling in the Canton of Graubünden. She married Swiss painter Gian Pedretti, with whom she would go on to have five children. In the 1960s, she steadily renounced working with metal in favor of paper, producing series of often narrative etchings based around the motif of the angel. Pedretti’s art is indissociable from her work as a writer, which had its origins in her childhood. She pursued both passions in parallel, reflecting her inclination for splitting her attention, without distinction, across multiple projects at once. Although Pedretti’s art was exhibited in several solo shows in Switzerland (Bern in 1975, Solothurn in 1976, Schaffhausen in 1981), it tended to be eclipsed by her prolific writings. She became one of the most widely read authors in Switzerland, publishing numerous articles, radio dramas, and novels. In the late 1970s, the family moved to La Neuveville in the Canton of Bern, where Pedretti began producing sculptures in her large studio. Her output from this period included , a series of fragile, hollow objects that she displayed hanging from the ceiling. These pieces were formed from a wire frame, onto which Pedretti applied plaster, acrylic, feathers, and impregnated fabric in a manner suggestive of bones, membranes, skin, scales, and wings. Fish- and bird-like features blended into one another, although these objects were without exception in a state of suspension. At the same time, Pedretti experimented with pen and pencil drawings on paper, creating intricate patterns—meshes, twists, and turns with an organic quality—interspersed with beaks, shells, plants, and eyes. This surreal quality soon transposed to her sculptures: vast wings, measuring several meters across, covered with latex-stiffened fabric—Pedretti shared a fascination for latex with Swiss artist Heidi Bucher, her contemporary. Veined with bamboo and wire, these flexible, translucent wings appear as if torn from a being, taking on a life of their own. Some were intended to be displayed outdoors, in parks and other public spaces, where they would wear out over time until their ultimate destruction. Pedretti’s hanging objects form the core of the MAMCO exhibition, which looks back at the artist’s experimentation with different materials in the latter half of the 1970s, along with her interest in the hybridization of beings and shapes. Curated by Elisabeth Jobin With the support of Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture, Oertli Stiftung, and the Municipalité de la Neuveville

Spanning over eight decades of artmaking, the works in encompass a broad range of artistic responses to the celestial imagination over the past century, both literally and metaphorically. Recalling the polished chrome and sleek surfaces of space-age design, the exhibition will include sculptures by Alexander Calder, Jeff Koons, Alicja Kwade, and Leo Villareal. Chromatic eruptions course through works by Latifa Echakhch, Sonia Gomes, Hermann Nitsch, Richard Pousette-Dart, and Lucas Samaras, suggesting nebulae that refract spectrums of speckled colour. Other, more oblique references to the cosmos recur in works by Torkwase Dyson, Adolph Gottlieb, Matthew Day Jackson, Robert Longo, Robert Rauschenberg, Arlene Shechet, Kiki Smith, and Mika Tajima, which will also be featured in the show. Many of the works in are united by the formal motif of the circle. This simple geometric shape, which can be found depicted in visual art from pre-historic sites across the globe, commonly signifies the infinite and cyclical nature of existence. Yet it also figures in pictorial depictions of basic elements invisible to the human eye: molecules, for example, and the atoms that form them are typically represented as spherical clusters. Richard Pousette-Dart’s (1989), featured in the exhibition, is composed of fields of the artist’s characteristic pointillist marks that coalesce into kaleidoscopic arrangements of whorls and shapes suggestive of stellar clusters, at once atomic and celestial. Monochromatic circles resurface in works by both Adolph Gottlieb, in (1966), and Robert Longo, in (2008), underscoring the salience of the form of the circle to the history of Modernist pictorialism. Meanwhile, the circular canvas of Torkwase Dyson’s (2021)—whose internal geometry refers to the hulls of ships that carried enslaved peoples across the Atlantic Ocean—proposes the possibility that utopias of liberation might emerge from new formulations of space, shape, and geometry. Sculptural works in bridge the effervescence of the celestial with the solidity of geology. In Kiki Smith’s (2013), seven- and nine-pointed stars burst skyward from a bronze base. (2018), also by Smith, depicts a shooting star in earthy hues, with single stalks of wheat cast on its surface as if emerging from the soil itself. Openings in Mika Tajima’s (2023), determined by applying the logic of acupuncture to sculpture, create channels in the piezoelectric material that suggest the spiritual practice of ‘opening’ the body to flows of energy and breath. These works, while substantial in their physical presence, undergo both material and conceptual transformations at the hands of the artist, inviting contemplation on the interplay between materiality and ephemerality. Jeff Koons’s (2016) invites viewers to inhabit the contemplative depths of reflection, meditating on their own place within the cosmic expanse, and becoming part of the artwork in the process. Meanwhile, Alicja Kwade’s monumental sculpture (2023) visualizes three spacetime wormholes within a cresting wave, enclosing four sodalite spheres. Here, the ultramarine mineral is veined in cloudy white and chartreuse patches, its polished surface reminiscent of The Blue Marble—the iconic photograph of Earth taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the moon. Proposing terrestrial and interstellar sites as a coherent, progressive whole, Kwade’s gracefully navigates the boundary between the familiar and the enigmatic.

Experience the sensational performance of The Flying Karamazov Brothers at the Smith Opera House in Geneva on March 23, 2024. This extraordinary event showcases four self-proclaimed eccentric individuals who captivate audiences with their unique blend of comedy, theatrics, and juggling prowess. Since their inception at UC Santa Cruz in 1973, The Flying Karamazov Brothers have taken their act worldwide, gracing prestigious stages such as Broadway and the silver screen. Despite their name, they are neither Russian nor brothers, but their talent is undeniable. Prepare to be entertained by 100 minutes of cleverness and comedy that will leave you in awe. Witness their astonishing juggling feats, wild theatrics, and arcane errata that have garnered acclaim from critics and audiences alike. Secure your tickets for this not-to-be-missed performance, with prices ranging from $18.12 to $55.59. Join us for an evening of laughter and amazement as The Flying Karamazov Brothers push the boundaries of traditional entertainment.

Mark your calendars for the highly anticipated Gavin Matts | Secret Society Comedy In Geneva event taking place on March 23, 2024, at the renowned Darkroom Brewing Company in Geneva. This night promises to be filled with laughter, wit, and unforgettable moments as Gavin Matts, a comedic genius, takes the stage to entertain the audience. The ticket prices range from $15 to $20, offering an affordable opportunity to experience top-notch comedy in a cozy and inviting atmosphere. Located at 32 N Broadway, Geneva, OH 44041, the venue provides the perfect setting for an evening of laughter and fun. Don't miss out on this exclusive event that is sure to leave you in stitches. Get your tickets early to secure your spot at Gavin Matts | Secret Society Comedy In Geneva!