exhibition view Un Lac Inconnu , 2023, Bally Foundation – Photo © Art Super Magazine
Villa Heleneum re-opens its spaces to art, research and the Bally Foundation, which since its founding year in 2006 has taken a new turn in its history finding its permanent home in the villa’s beautiful rooms on the shores of the Lake of Ceresio. Led by Vittoria Matarrese, the foundation intends to be a point of dialogue for contemporary art between artistic excellence, culture, territory and visionary talents, driving the limits of research and innovation beyond the field of fashion. Bally, one of the world’s longest-running luxury brands, founded in 1851 in Schönenwerd by Carl Franz Bally and his brother Fritz, has always been linked to themes such as innovation, support for creativity, art, sustainability, and diversity, as Nicolas Girotto, Bally’s CEO and chairman of the foundation, explains.
A well-planned future
The Bally Foundation’s program aims to tie itself to the hosting territory, creating connections with its community, myths and tales. A program developed with emerging and established contemporary artists in resonance with these elements. The future of the foundation will include exhibitions, site-specific installations, meetings, performance evenings, screening programs and workshops. Furthermore, starting in 2024, an artistic residency program will be planned for research and production, as well as partnerships with museums and art centers for the development of specific programs, highlighting an emerging contemporary scene with issues increasingly related to ecology and inclusion.
Opening at Bally Foundation, Un Lac Inconnu, 2023 – Photo © Art Super Magazine
Un Lac Inconnu
As a result of masterful collaborations with Mamco, Geneva, Frac Normandie, Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, Lugano, Galerie Allen, Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière, Galerie Gregor Staiger, Galerie High Art, Galerie Mennour, Galerie Sultana, Galerie Valerie Delaunay, and & Maison Louis Roederer, the opening of the exhibition Un Lac Inconnu brought together more than twenty international artists in order to design and recreate the emotional setting of Villa Heleneum, nestled between nature, time, and memory. Entitled after Marcel Proust’s words from the 1927 book Le temps retrouvé, published as the seventh and final volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust, already well advanced in years, perceives his own past differently from how he experienced it. Through the works of the artists, such as memories that dwell in the depths of Villa Heleneum’s soul, the exhibition has great evocative power to recall the emerged memory of the place and its nature. A shared vibration that runs through the proposals of the featured artists: Hélène Muheim, Willa Wasserman, Elise Peroi, Petrit Halilaj, Álvaro Urbano, Vito Acconci, Wilfrid Almendra, Rebecca Horn, Paul Maheke, Tania Gheerbrant, Yannick Haenel, Adelaide Fériot, Mathias Bensimon, Oliver Beer, Ligia Dias, Mel O’Callaghan, Caroline Bachmann, Emilija Škarnulytėm and Karim Forlin.
Élise Peroi, exhibition view Un Lac Inconnu , 2023, Bally Foundation – Photo © Art Super Magazine and Adélaïde Feriot, Rayon vert, (detail), 2021, Photo © Art Super Magazine
The Villa Heleneum, Hélène Bieber’s heritage
The Villa Heleneum, built between 1930 and 1934 by Hélène Bieber, a Parisian dancer and patron of the French bottegas frequented by Picasso, is a place anchored in its natural surroundings, washed by the shores of the Lake of Lugano, both Swiss and Italian. Hélène Bieber, a cultured and cosmopolitan figure, carried with her the ambition to create a place in the heart of Ticino similar to the Petit Trianon of Versailles, a small chateau bordered by gardens of different styles and intimate and personal universe of Marie Antoinette in its ultimate use, far from the pomp of the court. Hélène collaborated with the architect Hugo Dunkel to build her “Heleneum,” but due to World War II and the economic crisis of the 1930s, Hélène was powerless to carry out her project and the mansion was only sporadically habitated. From the late 1960s onward, the villa hosted various cultural activities, such as the piano school directed by the pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, the seminars of the Istituto Ticinese di Alti Studi, directed by the Italian philosopher and historian of religions Élemire Zolla, and the headquarters of the Center for Semantic and Cognitive Studies of the Dalle Molle Institute. Moreover, the Museum of Extra-European Cultures, now MUSEC, was founded here. One more chance to close the circle of the founders’ intentions, thanks to the purposes and large renovation investments made possible by the brand Bally.
Ligia Dias, ANTONI, 2021, exhibition view Un Lac Inconnu, 2023, Bally Foundation Photo © Art Super Magazine and Paul Maheke, Feeling the Tides Within the Fluids of My Body, 2019, exhibition view Un Lac Inconnu, 2023, Bally Foundation Photo © Art Super Magazine
The winner of the Bally Artist Award 2023: Pedro Wirtz
Pedro Wirtz, Brazilian artist born in 1981 and living in Zurich, is the winner of the Bally Artist Award 2023. The installation with the temporary title Diplomatic Immunity is a project that questions hierarchies, class privileges and power, along with ancient social archetypes. On view from June 3, the Masi will host the 13 busts installed in front of 3 wall reliefs in one of the halls of the Palazzo Reali. The sculptures, symbols of hierarchies of power (economical, social, religious, political or cultural) are placed in commanding positions and they are constructed through the assemblage of various materials, collected by Pedro Wirz in his studio, imitating the effect of capitalism’s continuous accumulation and the demise of the symbols of power gone to ruin. The position of the busts will deliberately reflect on the meaning of sustainable society, between competition and collaboration. The overcoming of individual desires toward a common existence grounded in the ability to coexist.
Pedro Wirtz, Immunité Diplomatique, Bally Artist Award 2023
