Susanne Stähli

The central theme of Susanne Stähli (born 1959) is color. For years, the painter has been intensively exploring the expressive values and perceptual possibilities of color. Especially for the Clemens-Sels-Museum Neuss, Stähli had designed a color-space concept consisting of current panel paintings, murals and transparencies, which transformed the foyer, the cafeteria and the garden hall of the house into unique color spaces.

The exhibition was based on an in-depth examination of the architectural conditions of the museum and its specific lighting conditions, to which the artist brought her many years of experience in dealing with color, space and light. Through the use of color alone, Susanne Stähli was able to counteract the heaviness of the concrete architecture, the massiveness of the staircase, and the closed-off nature of the overall building in favor of lightness, fleetingness, and openness. Through the deliberate use and selected colorfulness of the foil sheets, Stähli visually lifted the material boundaries and optical barriers of inside and outside. She allowed the museum and the surrounding park landscape to merge into a single entity, turning a visit to the museum into an impressive experience.

The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog with numerous photographs documenting the spaces before and after the artistic intervention. In this way, the manifold transformations that the house underwent as a result of Susanne Stähli's intervention could be read. In addition, a diverse accompanying program illuminated the theme of color in all its facets and allowed the various modes of representation and sensual experience of color to be experienced through workshops and readings to dance and music events.