For the past five years the paintings of Vittorio Brodmann have relied on a commitment to small-scale canvases and surrealistic animated figuration. In his first major institutional solo, Water Under the Bridge, Brodmann keeps the latter while adding monumentality to the scale of his artistic ambitions. It’s an invigorating and generous slam dunk, breaking open new and exciting avenues for his work.

Following a conversation in January this year with critics Max Glauner, Helen Lagger and Samuel Schellenberg, in March Aoife Rosenmeyer returned to the subject of practicing contemporary criticism with Mitchell Anderson, Brit Barton, Adam Jasper and Julia Moritz. While these four are active elsewhere as artists, curators, academics and in art mediation, their critical writing is to be found in specialist international art publications on and off-line. This is the discussion that ensued.

In her first major institutional show in Switzerland, Claudia Comte delivers all the dull mid-range design we’ve come to expect, but here there’s a lot more and, now, with the incredulous air of credibility. Titled 10 Rooms, 40 Walls, 1059 m2, and featuring over 60 paintings, 40 sculptures, 40 wall paintings and some prints, it’s an epic ode to the big, dumb and aggressively anti-intellectual.

This issue seeks to bring to the forefront the various positions and strategies of the most diverse art initiatives, from project and off-spaces to personalities within the art field, as well as those of established galleries and institutions and city officials based in Zurich in 2020. Originally, this issue was intended to draw a picture of the Zurich art scene and was meant to be published parallel to Art Basel 2020. Though with the current pandemic’s additional layering, the main focus of the precariousness of the independent art scene in Zurich has increased dramatically. In this respect, we would like ...