Selected EVENTS

KLYBECK 610, Gärtnerstrasse 2, Basel
For the 2023 Basel edition, VOLTA has moved to a new location. Klybeck 610 is an architectural jewel designed by architects Suter + Suter in 1967. It is based in the Klybeck district and now places VOLTA in the heart of the city’s international art market and a short 15 minute walk from Art Basel.
Art Basel and photobasel VIPs gain free entry to VOLTA. General admission ticket holders for these fairs are offered a discounted admission.

See you at Booth A04!

We are happy to announce the launch of Lechbinska Paper devoted to the mesmerising techniques and materiality of the artworks ever done on paper. We believe that in the ever-increasing digitalisation of our world, the complex printing techniques and the mastery of hand drawing should be well mediated and then appreciated by collectors and the wider public.

XIAO SE / 萧瑟 (*1970) grew up in Beijing in the second half of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). He experienced the tumultuous socio-political and cultural climate during the 1978 liberalist economic reform and the late ’80s student movements. He is best known for his surrealist paintings, which skillfully fuse religious motifs in the early Renaissance masterpieces into realistic portrayals of individuals’ living conditions in postsocialist China. From 1986 to 1991, Xiao studied in Beijing’s School of Fine Arts, the PRC. In 1995, he graduated from the Environment Art Design Center at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Design. In 2000, Xiao Se was nominated as one of the Emerging Talents in Chinese Oil Paintings in the official art magazine Art Research.

What stands behind the term “contemporary Chinese art”? Is it correct to coin such a term in the discourse of globalised art histories? Can the works by expatriate Chinese artists still be called Chinese art? And finally, what makes contemporary Chinese art so attractive to Western collectors? These are the questions, that a young gallerist and art historian Julia Lechbinska faces in her daily work. Sinokultur Salon in dialogue with Julia Lechbinska invites you to step into the history and development of contemporary Chinese art and its reception in the West.

Bathing in the first warm beams of the spring sun, we all tend to be a bit more delicate and dreamy. With a selection of a dozen artworks, we invite you to breathe in the air enriched by aromas of Himalayan cypresses by Angela Lyn, embrace the nonchalance and lightness of being by Xiao Se, and take a chance to rediscover the familiar objects in their new foliage by Han Feng.

In April 2023 the Swiss Association Empowering Underprivileged Children together with Lechbinska Gallery launches a special charity art auction in order to raise funds and support a charity initiative Kinderhilfe Kambodscha e.V. (KKeV) in Cambodia.

KKeV has a children's village for up to 100 children and a street children program that provides school support for up to 120 street children.

Is it the Big Dipper or Draco Constellation in the sky? Or is it a landscape track, mapping the milestones one has to follow? The grainy surface of the pigment prints engages one’s eye in a playful discovery process. The "Starlight Writing" series by the Swiss artist Bignia Wehrli represents traces of seven-day routes, that a man walked on Earth.

The "Starlight Writing" series documents the seven day-routes of Bignia's father, who collected hay on his farm in Sternenberg, Switzerland in the late summer of 2012. The artist equipped her father with GPS and re-traced the route later in winter 2014 with the help of a specially developed instrument “starlight pencil”.

We've discussed with the artists how light and shadow are generated and extinguished in a moving space and time. Bignia Wehrli and Liao Wenfeng will give insights into their artistic practice and show how they capture and record moments of light and darkness using different media.

The Opera House Riots of 1980 took place just meters from L-ART SPACE current location. Then, Zürich was burning with a desire for more open cultural space. Now, the world is heating up, and Zürich may burn in ways unanticipated.

Zürich has traditionally been exempt from the kind of temperatures that cause heat refuges to appear in the urban landscape. L-ART SPACE cools itself in summer by opening windows. But how long can this privileged situation last?

Zeng Zhe was born in Zhejiang in 1980. She entered the secondary school affiliated of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1996 and the Central Academy of Drama in 1999, majoring in stage design. In 2014, she held a solo exhibition, "Moment of Being" (EGG Gallery, Beijing), moved to Berlin in 2017, participated in the choreography of the opera "Turandot" at Ai Weiwei Studio in 2018-2019, and completed the book “Another Place, Some Other Time" with Li Zhenhua from 2020-2022. Currently lives and works in Berlin. The exhibition is curated by Li Zhenhua.

In the series Members Get-Together, Asia Society Switzerland aims to give our community the chance to engage with each other and exchange views and ideas in an informal setting. Whether it's during a lunch with an expert, while visiting a gallery or just over drinks, the Members Get-Together gives you the opportunity to interact with other Asia Society Members and expand your network.

Angela Lyn in conversation with Julia Lechbinska.
We invite you to join our talk on the new ways of coming together as an artist, gallery, and viewer.

Angela Lyn presents her new project, which will launch at Chambers Fine Art in NY in May, and will continue its journey to cultural institutions in the US and Europe. Passage - in the wake of the world reflects on how global challenges connect us. In a polarizing world, the theme we address and our shared approach are both relevant and captivating.

Giaco Schiesser, Prof. emeritus for culture and media theories and for artistic research, Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK, talks with Julia Lechbinska about the artistic cooperation, Eigensinn and work of Angela Lyn. Giaco states, that "I believe in cooperation if two artists create something completely new or something that makes big difference from what the audience has seen before. Then it is worthwhile to bring together two artists."

Last October we announced an Open Call in cooperation with KOSMOS for architects and artists to take over our gallery space with a project, relevant to the times we live in. We received 50 applications from international entrants with diverse backgrounds and experience.

This January, we had two intensive sessions with our honored jury: Andreas Ruby, the director of the Swiss Architecture Museum; Anna Puigjaner, the founder of MAIO Architects; Leonid Slonimskiy, the co-founder of KOSMOS Architects, and Julia Lechbinska.

Bignia Wehrli (*1979) born in Uster, Switzerland, is an artist based in Berlin and Sternenberg (Switzerland). She studied art at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (Germany) at the École des Beaux-Arts Paris (France) and at the China Academy of Art Hangzhou (China). Bignia Wehrli translates ephemeral actions and everyday traces into images by inventing new techniques and instruments for their visualisation.

Liao Wenfeng / 廖文峰 (*1984) was born in Jiangxi Province (China) in 1984. He graduated in China Academy of Art in 2006. In 2016 he received his master's degree from Berlin University of the Arts. He currently lives in Berlin. Liao Wenfeng often uses everyday objects for his artistic praxis, bringing a certain atmosphere of uncertainty into everyday situations.

Light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eyes. Bignia Wehrli, with her scientific approach, records the light waves sent by distant stars, including the closest one to the Earth, the Sun. The light waves travel through space for many years before they reach Earth and can be seen. Liao Wenfeng on the other side focuses on the light produced by the means available on Earth.

Giaco Schiesser, Prof. emeritus for culture and media theories and for artistic research, Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK, talks with artist Angela Lyn about her new project "Passage in the Wake of the World": the black mountain, the oar, the vessel, the wake, the abyss - as a narrative, a performance and a response to our time.

Documentation of contemporary street Russian artists just two weeks after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

Continuing the theme of sculpture, Han Feng developed a sculptural approach to re-molding, where he wraps the physical exterior around the canvas and, after completing the painting, removes the object, leaving the canvas in its original shape.

The sculpture has different meanings in the English and German contexts, one being materially sculpted and other being shaped cumulatively. Chinese means both.Dieter Detzner's work has always been about light, re-perceiving space and volume at the junction of new material assemblages.

SELECTED by Li Zhenhua and Julia Lechbinska aims to discover some phenomenal artists in the art field and their creations and practices. With imagery and art, historical concepts constitute some of the most precious crystals of knowledge today. The focus is on the transformation of art, which constitutes an ideological shift. SELECTED focuses on the technical discoveries and humanistic explorations involved in the artists’ creations.

We are thrilled to announce the workshop by Yoh Nagao this Saturday at our gallery. Yoh will present his mesmerizing collage technique. Adults & kids are kindly invited. Yoh Nagao is passionate about ethnography. After his vast artistic research on distant in space and time cultures, Yoh focuses today on his ancestors' cultural background.

TOGETHER SPACES shows a number of speculative urban development projects, which are partly located in Switzerland, and partly in other countries and all have a common goal: to uncover the hidden potential of contemporary cities. While the projects deal with the use of public space, they also raise larger, more global questions about our society, such as the use and scarcity of existing resources, circular economy, openness and inclusiveness, coexistence in the city, and much more.

Thematic talk with Prof. Dr. Hans B. Thomsen (Chair of East Asian Art History, University of Zürich), Sabine S. Bradel (PhD candidate) and Martina Ōnishi (the artist's widow). An enriching discussion for both knowledge and feelings! Martina Ōnishi, the artist's widow, shares her memories of Hiroshi Ōnishi, as a person, father, and an artist. The talk is moderated by Prof. Dr. Hans Thomsen, the reference for expertise in Japanese art in Switzerland.

Initiated a twinning partnership about four decades ago, Zurich and Kunming enjoy a collaboration that is constantly being renewed. Also, artists from both cities have frequent communication. A representative example would be the collaboration between a Zurich-based artist Katharina Rähmi and a Kunming-based artist Gao Xiang. The opening with Isabelle Knöpfli.

Angela Lyn’s work major solo exhibition is currently held in 25 rooms of the Villa Arconati, a 400-year-old palazzo on the outskirts of Milan. The artist engages her audience with over 150 works, including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation work, and video, in a synergetic weave with baroque architecture. The themes she addresses mark a poetic line between the past, present, and future. She will share with us the journey she made in creating this unusual exhibition curated by Li Zhenhua.

On the ground floor of the historic building at Mühlebachstrasse 12, where the wagon manufacturer Heinrich Eckert once lived, KOSMOS Architects, together with the LECHBINSKA GALLERY, will transform the White Cube Gallery into an inclusive space open to everyone: in addition to the architectural exhibition, visitors will also find space for peaceful meditation.