The High Yellow Note Group exhibition featuring VALIE EXPORT and Martha Jungwirth

Lemon-yellow, fresh butter, ochre, chrome, dull yellow, purplish and even white or grey... Vincent van Gogh’s yellow comes incountless shades! This is particularly striking in the works he produced during the twenty-seven months he spent in the Southof France. On 24 March 1889, in Arles, he wrote to his brother that he was once again trying to achieve the “high yellow note”he had discovered the previous summer. For him, it was much more than a colour: it was a creative highpoint – intensely challenging, both feared and desired – a phenomenon of exaltation or mental empowerment.

This exhibition showcases the work of twenty-two artists from different generations and horizons; all of them explore reality, in search of the intuitions and emotions they need to create their art, in the same way that an opera singer tries to achieve the highest possible note with their voice. Van Gogh’s “high yellow note” is not just a technical pursuit, or the personal achievementof an artist through their practice. It’s also a quest for a mode of expression that pushes the boundaries of its own form, idealsand emotions, in suffering or jubilation, to the point of explosion. 

Richard Artschwager, Paul Blanchet aka le Sauvage, Louise Bourgeois, Vittorio Brodmann, Claude Cahun, Nina Childress, Martin Disler, Valie Export, Markus Gadient, Bruno Jakob, Asger Jorn, Martha Jungwirth, Karen Kilimnik, Verena Loewensberg, Albert Oehlen, Thomias Radin, Pipilotti Rist, Klaudia Schifferle, Pierre Schwerzmann, Hyun-Sook Song, Vincent van Gogh, Dominique White