With several notable museums and a host of renowned galleries, you don’t have to look far in Zurich for contemporary art. Recently though, some interesting new alternatives have sprung up. Temporary galleries in industrial buildings, artist-curators, participatory art spaces – Zurich’s offspaces are where the action is. Zurich In Your Pocket took a tour.

We started our tour at the Dienstgebäude, an artist-run exhibition space which, started off in rooms where railway workers once changed into their working outfits, but has recently moved to the Binz district. Andreas Marti has his studio here and is one of the artists who initiated the project. He sees himself as an artist foremost, and as a curator on the side. For him, having his studio and the exhibition space in the same rooms is quite essential. It means he can easily combine running the space and working on his own art. Originally the studios came first, then came the idea to start organising exhibitions in free space in and around the studios. The next exhibition at the Dienstgebäude will be curated by Ryan Gander, presenting work by young British artists (opens February 9). “We are very proud to have Ryan Gander come to Zurich to work with us. For some people he’s close to a half-god”, Marti says. The choice of artists is something of an exception, as the Dienstgebäude usually concentrates on artists from Zurich or Switzerland. The Catch of the Year is one of the exhibitions they made their name with – 120 pieces by 120 Zurich artists, a kind of selective synopsis of Zurich’s art scene, held at the end of the year, every year since 2009. “We invite artists whose work we know”, says Marti. But they don’t take just any work, it has to have a sort of Dienstgebäude flavour. As in the other exhibition spaces we stopped by, this doesn’t mean a restriction on techniques: drawings, prints, video, objects, performances, anything is possible.

The Corner College, our next stop west of Langstrasse, has a highly participatory concept – for instance anybody can turn up at the planning sessions for their Theory Tuesdays (often in English) and propose a topic. And the action is not only on Tuesdays. There are film screenings, book launches, exhibitions, lectures and excursions on different days of the week. Here the focus is mainly on debating on art and society – not surprising perhaps, as the college was co-founded by art history students. The Corner College shares its premises with the book shop Motto, which stocks books and magazines on a wide range of subjects from architecture to art theory and favours small, independent publishers.

We also popped into Starkart and the message salon, both in the Langstrasse district. Exhibitions are regularly hosted at both, as well as concerts, readings etc. Starkart’s festival poolloop in summer is one of the important events on the calendar here, dedicated to the phenomenon of loops in sound, visuals and text. The message salon is located on Langstrasse, where most salons go about more sleazy business. In 2008 it was at the centre of a scandal when it showed a piece of Petr Motycka’s work, a projection of comic-style graphics which played with the themes of prostitution and politics. The gallery was taken to court on the accusation of pornography – but was acquitted in the end.

Finally we wandered over to Karma International in the Seefeld district which is a more conventional kind of gallery. The art they focus on however is not so conventional. Actually at first we weren’t sure whether there was an exhibition on or whether renovation work was taking place. Contemporary art can be confusing – or should be! Karma International has a reputation for picking up on the newest developments in the city’s art scene.

While many of the offspaces are not quite in the centre of Zurich, it’s a real hike getting to Studiolo, in what was a sculptress’ studio for decades and now is a combined production and exhibition space. But as Andreas Marti of Dienstgebäude comments, the edges of cities are sometimes more interesting than their centres. And that’s definitely true if you want to see what young local artists have to say in Zurich today.


Locations:

- Corner College / Motto, Kochstrasse 1, www.corner-college.com
- Dienstgebäude, Töpferstrasse 26, www.dienstgebaeude.ch
- Karma International, Dufourstrasse 48, www.karmainternational.org
- message salon (Perla Mode), Langstrasse 84, www.likeyou.com/messagesalon
- Starkart, Brauerstrasse 126, www.starkart.ch
- Studiolo, Eierbrechstrasse 50,www.studiolo.ch