Exhibition Programme 2025

The 2025 exhibition programme combines the old and familiar with the new and unexpected. While the Kunsthalle focuses on the moving image of the renowned Swiss artist Roman Signer (*1938), the Kunstmuseum is dedicated to an entire medium. The international group exhibition Sound of the Earth places ceramics in relation to contemporary art. In the second half of the year, the young artist Agata Ingarden (*1994) will have her first solo exhibition in Switzerland, while at the same time various perspectives on the collection will be explored at the Kunstmuseum. Everyday materials play a role for all the artists. Be it with standardised or found objects from the world around us or with one of the oldest media known to mankind, their works create encounters with fictional narratives and poetic transformation processes. The annual programme reveals itself to be playful and ironic, mixing high and low and thus putting the usual perspective to the test. In all exhibitions, an in-depth look into a realm of existential questions opens up, revealing the profound and the abysmal.

until 4 May 2025
Kunstmuseum /

The exhibition Daiga Grantina. Notes on Kim Lim traces the work of the Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim (1936-1997) in a contemporary and associative exploration and places her oeuvre in dialogue with the sculptures of the Latvian artist Daiga Grantina (*1985). Kim Lim's oeuvre includes abstract sculptures made of wood and stone as well as works on paper that reflect on the relationship between art and nature. Daiga Grantiņa uses a wide range of everyday materials in her practice, from the synthetic to the organic, often reversing and transcending the boundaries of their traditional use to create associative formations. There are remarkable similarities and parallels between Daiga Grantina's sculptures and Kim Lim's works, particularly in terms of their mutability and elasticity, which are constitutive for both artists. At the same time, the differences between the works become clear, creating an effective tension.

Being the first presentation of Kim Lim's work in Switzerland, the exhibition is not intended to be a retrospective, but rather looks at her work from an artistic perspective. The ‘notes’ on Lim's work are complemented by the views of the photographer Katalin Deer and the poet Ilma Rakusa in an artist publication designed by Toan Vu-Huu, as well as by the voice of the sound artist and composer Anna Zaradny.

15 January to 26 February
every Wednesday, 1 - 6 p.m.
/ Kunsthalle

In the summer of 1936, the festival play ‘Bi ös im Appezöllerlendli’ [With us in the Appenzell countryside] was performed over five days in a specially built festival hut in Appenzell. Several thousand people travelled to see around three hundred people from the village dancing, singing and telling mythical stories on stage to create a self-image of rural life. The play had two scenes, which were interrupted by a brief artificial thunderstorm. Two landscape paintings by the young artist Carl Walter Liner (1914 – 1997), which are on permanent loan from the Appenzell Men's Choir in the collection of the Heinrich Gebert Kulturstiftung Appenzell, served as an alternating backdrop. The exhibition sheds light on this moment and reconstructs the large-format backdrop paintings into an open stage space.

8 March to 4 May
/ Kunsthalle

The Kunsthalle is opening its rooms for the launch of the photobook on the Riedfunken bonfire and an accompanying exhibition presentation. The project was initiated by the internationally renowned Appenzell-born artist Roman Signer and is a collaboration with Alexandra Signer, the Ried Appenzell Funkenverein, the Ried Corporation Foundation, Agathe Nisple, Monica Dörig, Roland Inauen, Alfred Koller and Guido Koller. Photographs of the old tradition of Funken Sunday in Appenzell Innerrhoden will be published by Peter Zimmermann, with texts by Monica Dörig, Stefanie Gschwend, Agathe Nisple and Roland Inauen.

25 May – 14 September
Kunstmuseum /

The international group exhibition on ceramics in contemporary art is the first exhibition in Switzerland to explore current approaches to this medium. It focuses on artists for whom ceramics has become a core element of their practice, whether as the sole medium or in parallel with painting, sculpture or other media. The exhibition brings together works that experiment with the sculptural potential of ceramics, blurring the boundaries between high art and craft.

With Caroline Achaintre, Christian Andersen, Nicole Cherubini, Woody De Othello, Martin Chramosta, Edmund De Waal, Clare Goodwin, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Isa Melsheimer, Lindsey Mendick, Shahpour Pouyan und Paloma Proudfoot.

Curated by Stefanie Gschwend, Director Kunstmuseum / Kunsthalle Appenzell and Felicity Lunn, Head of Art and Design Division, Bern Academy of the Arts.

25 May – 14 September
/ Kunsthalle

From the very beginning, the work of Roman Signer (*1938, CH) has been concerned with ephemeral events and the release of provoked and existing energies. His materials are natural forces such as water, wind, fire or gravity, which he relates to everyday objects such as chairs, buckets, red kayaks, blue barrels, remote-controlled flying objects, umbrellas or fans and which repeatedly appear as leitmotifs in the artist's work. He forms grotesquely comical situations into images and unfolds a subtle poetry of humour. Signer documents the precisely planned actions, which are composed of the potential of the situation, the transformation of energy and the trace of the process, in photographic series, on film or later on video. The Super 8 films that Roman Signer shot from the mid-1970s onwards play a special role. They go far beyond a filmic documentation of his actions and become an independent medium in his oeuvre. At the centre of the exhibition are the Super 8 films made in Signer's hometown of Appenzell and the surrounding area. This is Roman Signer's first solo exhibition in Appenzell, CH, which extends over three floors of the Kunsthalle and parts of the former brickworks.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a Catalogue raisonné of all the Super 8 films will be published by Verlag Walther König, edited by Peter Zimmermann, with texts by Stefanie Gschwend (Director of the Kunstmuseum / Kunsthalle Appenzell) and Stephan Kunz (Director of the Bündner Kunstmuseum).

4 October 2025 – 19 April 2026
/ Kunsthalle

Agata Ingarden's (*1994, PL) solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle is the first comprehensive presentation of her work in Switzerland. Her works develop proposals for imaginary worlds as active possibilities for speculative future scenarios. The visual vocabulary surprises with unexpected connections between everyday objects and natural materials, industrial processes and organic forms. Nevertheless, a sense of familiarity pervades the works, reminiscent of ancient cultures and techniques. The works, which are often produced on a clearly non-human scale, have a disconcerting effect and convey a new, non-anthropocentric perspective.

4 October 2025 – 19 April 2026
Kunstmuseum /

The relationships we cultivate with works of art can touch us both personally and socially. Art stimulates thought and critical reflection, can serve as a repository for stories, as a mirror of society or of our own feelings and experiences, and helps us to connect with others. This exhibition is about the connections that exist between the works of art and the people who engage with them in their own way: be it in everyday interaction, at work or in more casual encounters. Selected individuals who are connected with the Heinrich Gebert Kulturstiftung's collection or who help to shape public life in Appenzell and the surrounding area through their social and cultural commitment are invited to choose a work from the collection. This lively selection forms the starting point for an exhibition of the collection and connects people directly with the works.

Ongoing
/ Kunsthalle

The project Appenzell Now and Then at the Kunsthalle was initiated with local and regional artists. The works of Carl Walter and Carl August Liner, which marked the starting point of the institution, are continually supplemented with contemporary works by local artists and placed in dialogue with each other. The result is a changing presentation and a different view of the present and past.

With Christian Meier and Ueli Alder.