The Bally Foundation is ready to opens the doors to the "Villa Heleneum", a 1930s building on the shores of Lake Lugano in Switzerland. The opening of the new building, entirely dedicated to the landscape, will be accompanied by the inaugural exhibition "Un lac inconnu" (An Unknown Lake), which will explore the narrative potential of the region, its history, and its myths, highlighting the existing permeability of the relationship between interiority and exteriority. The show is a first collective exhibition inspired by the framework of the foundation and the fusion between the human and the landscape.

But even more than an experience that encourages us to observe our surroundings, the exhibition is an immersion into ourselves. "Faced with the landscape at a standstill, the phenomenon of contemplation allows for synchronicity: a common vibration between what is happening outside and inside, deep within each of us," as noted by the Bally Foundation.

There are works by some twenty international contemporary artists: historical figures such as Vito Acconci and Rebecca Horn, very established, like Philippe Parreno and Oliver Beer, but also younger talents, from Tania Gheerbrant to Paul Maheke.

"Un lac inconnu is particularly concerned with giving body and voice to the underlying: to the subconscious, to memory, to the cracks and images that inhabit us, which are equally wonderful and disturbing. The inner voices of the lake, those of Villa Heleneum, their geographies, their memories, their histories and their myths, as well as our own, are thereby interwoven in a superimposition of narrative and temporal frameworks halfway between dream and reality. Bringing together more than twenty international artists, Un lac inconnu is a poetic wander through submerged and emerged landscapes. An attempt to connect with to oneself and the world," read the Bally Foundation statement.

Un lac inconnu
April 20 – September 24, 2023
Bally Foundation
Villa Heleneum
via Cortivo 24
6976 Lugano (Switzerland)

Photo by Andrea Rossetti