“Home game” 2024 with five exhibitions in three cantons and two countries.

“Mr. Kübler” lives right next to the entrance to the Kunsthalle St.Gallen. Every now and then he lifts the lid and starts walking around with bloodshot eyes and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Beni Bischof, an artist from the Rhine Valley with a studio in St.Gallen, is behind the waste bin that has come to life. It makes the very fitting start to the exhibition “Uncanny Unchained: The Power of Weird” at the Kunsthalle St.Gallen.

A lot of things in this exhibition seem strange and eerie, as the title suggests. Above all, it is the funniest show of the “home game” in 2024.

Fawn with leopard skin

Like the other curators of the four other exhibitions in Glarus, Dornbirn, Arbon and in the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, curator Barbara Kiolbassa had the challenging task of making a selection from a diverse bunch of 476 applications from artists from the region. There are 23 who made it into the Kunsthalle and are therefore part of the “Heimspiel”, a showcase of regional art that only takes place every three years.

Bizarre and strange things are very welcome in this exhibition, which seems to be all of a piece and approaches art with a wink: including a stuffed deer with painted leopard skin, which the Vorarlberg native Thomas Anton Rauch combines with a can of sardines and a curling plastic snake.

According to the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, there is always something familiar in the uncanny: such as in the row of slices of toast that Karin Würmli has given grim faces.

A lot of anger towards the mullahs in Iran and solidarity with the oppressed women is expressed in the work of Isabelle Krieg, who lives in Kreuzlingen: she made Molotov cocktails out of bottles and women's hair.

Natural yodelling and bubbling fountains

Isabelle Krieg is one of a few artists who are present at the “Heimspiel” with several works. Its fabric-filled “original cord” leads like an umbilical cord to the basement of the St.Gallen Art Museum. The curators Gianni Jetzer and Lorenz Wiederkehr were inspired for the title of their exhibition “La Reservoir” by the spatial architecture, which with its many columns is reminiscent of a water reservoir, and also by the abundance and diversity of regional art. The wrong article is deliberately placed – as a small barb. “Le réservoir” means “storage” or “storage container” in French.

As befits an underground reservoir, the light is sparse, especially because of the numerous video works that can be seen there. The works of the 18 artists are cleverly and harmoniously placed in the winding, not easy to curate space; almost all partition walls have been removed.

The dramatic lighting atmosphere corresponds to the weighty content of numerous works. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of them. St. Gallen resident Tamara Janes, in collaboration with Natalia Funariu, had an entire curtain printed with AI-generated snow faces. Is this a creative achievement of the artists or of artificial intelligence? Barbara Brülisauer, on the other hand, asks whether biodiversity is a tradable good. She sells square digital certificates, so-called NFTs, for an area that she has ecologically enhanced for plants and insects.

A focus of the exhibition is works that contain music and sounds. This is how the natural yodelling of the queer Schuppel of Wiler Vanessà Heer compares with the splashing of the two fountains of the Thurgau art duo Steffenschöni, which are anything but natural: They consist of the casts of gasoline canisters, kettles and plastic hoses.

The secret shooting star of the “home game” is Reinhard Tobler: the works of the artist, who lives in Trogen and Zurich, can be seen not only in the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, but also in Werk 2 in Arbon and in the Kunsthaus Glarus. The son of a Korean mother and a father from Ausserrhoden addresses his work growing up in two cultures. But he also deals with the worlds that open up in video games. For example, in Arbon he has human heads from a video game continuously produced by a 3D printer.

It is a work that fits exceptionally well into the exhibition in Work 2, with which the Thurgau Art Museum is opening up the impressive hall as a place for art for the first time. Stefanie Hoch is showing works by 21 artists under the title “The stuff the present is made of” (loosely based on Shakespeare) where the Saurer company once produced weaving machines.

The textile also forms a loosely placed and harmonious thread through the exhibition. In her animation, Ukrainian-born Elena Corvaglia, who lives in the canton of Thurgau, has the thread spool containers of a ship's embroidery machine clash on two fronts like armies. Mirijam Špendov embroiders memories of family vacations in the former Yugoslavia onto used textiles such as handkerchiefs or pillowcases.

In her video work “Labor,” Sarah Hugentobler shows soulless office landscapes in which clones of the artist carry out mysterious activities. Finally, Maria Anwander from Vorarlberg hoisted a flag outside that renounces all nationalism: she brought together the stars of all the country flags in the world to form a starry sky that unites everything.

Gunsteel Fireweed

At the Kunsthaus Glarus, director Melanie Ohnemus is showing what is probably the most daring of the five exhibitions. Under the enigmatic title “Gestalt” they have selected works that combine to form a floating narrative about the present. It's about the diffuse feeling of not knowing exactly where the journey is going.

They are works that develop their impact and power through unconventional neighborhoods: the strange sculptures by the Vorarlberg brothers Christoph and Markus Getzner join Jürg Jaberg's acrylic paintings in which people, architecture and nature unite to create surreal worlds. Jiří Makovec's video work “EUR”, which was filmed in a Roman park, also has something surreal about it. There, people go about their everyday activities in front of fascist architecture.

In the Dornbirn art space, director Thomas Häusle ultimately limited himself to four artists whose works fit in exceptionally well with the former industrial hall. This is particularly true of Katharina Fitz's sculptures made of plaster, wood and ceramics, which look as if they were made for the room.

It's just a shame that Lucie Schenker's works are placed too close together. Her floating parachute silk stairs deserved more space. With Ursula Palla's work, less would have been more: instead of three installations placed close together, it would have been enough to show her wonderful willowherbs made of weapon steel and bronze.