Baur au Lac

Zurich’s Baur au Lac Unveils The Line-up For Its Annual Art In The Park Exhibition 2025

The storied Baur au Lac in Zurich, a member of The Leading Hotels of The World, unveils the line-up for the 23rd edition of its Art in The Park exhibition.  Masterminded by the current sixth generation owner, Gigi Kracht, the prestigious event has become a firm fixture on the Zurich cultural calendar and beyond, taking place between 16th June and 23rd July 2025, coinciding with Zurich Art Weekend and a week prior to Art Basel.

In partnership with Zurich’s Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Baur au Lac is proud to announce that the following highly-acclaimed international artists will be exhibiting at this year’s event; Sam Falls (US), Mark Handforth (HK), Jean-Marie Appriou (FR), Valentin Carron (CH) and Louisa Gagliardi (CH). Taking place in the hotel’s leafy park overlooking Lake Zurich, the artists will be showcasing a mixture of sculptures and paintings.

Sculptures 

Sam Falls

Concerned with the intimacy of time, the illustration of place, and exploration of mortality, Sam Falls has created his own formal language by intertwining photography’s core parameters of time and exposure with nature and her elements. Working largely outdoors with vernacular materials and nature as a site-specific subject, Falls abandons mechanical reproduction in favour of a more symbiotic relationship between subject and object. In doing so, he bridges the gap between photography, sculpture, and painting, as well as the divide between artist, object, and viewer.

Falls will be showcasing the following two pieces during Art in The Park:

• A large outdoor pavilion made of gemstone terrazzo and steel (2015)
  – Untitled (Healing pavilion: calm and balance, peaceful sleep, soothes frayed nerves, endocrine system healing, mental organization, stress relief, patience, helps kidney function and fatigue, writers block and truthfulness, overcoming fear, and unconditional love, respectively to stones below)

• A large square structure constructed from ceramic I-beams entitled: Room (2019)

Reunion (2009) by Sam Falls

Jean-Marie Appriou’s sculptures evoke archaic forms and are inspired by contemporary but also mythological and futuristic worlds. Often working with aluminium and bronze, he pushes the creative boundaries of these materials through experimental finishes and by incorporating elements such as blown glass. By alluding to familiar forms, whether animal or human, and using a unique, almost alchemical approach to his source material, Appriou has created his very own mythology

Appriou will be showcasing a series of the following nine sculptures at Art in The Park:

• Fire on the Sea (2020). Patinated aluminium, glass
• Acid Saliva I (2018). Aluminium, glass
• Mirage (Erg Chebbi) (2018). Aluminium
• Cypress (Vessel) (2018).  Cast aluminium
• Cypress (Rock) (2018).  Cast aluminium
• Pân (2018).  Cast aluminium
• Le joueur de flûte (2018). Cast aluminium
• Ama pioka (2021). Patinated bronze
• Ama tali (2021). Patinated bronze

Fire on the Sea (2020) by Jean-Marie Appriou

Valentin Carron

In his sculptures and collages, Valentin Carron imitates traditional handicrafts and unknown artworks, as well as stereotypical modern and everyday forms. By appropriating these objects and styles, he questions originality, authenticity, and identity in the globalised world. He reformulates traditional handicrafts, mainly from his Swiss homeland, by substituting natural materials like wood for synthetic materials; or conversely, he commissions well-trained craftsmen to create precious works imitating cheap industrial articles.

Carron will be exhibiting the following four pieces at Art in The Park:

• Adult and Child (2023). Painted aluminium
• Ciao n°3 (2012). Piaggio Ciao restored
• Ciao n°7 (2013). Ciao Piaggio restored
• Ciao n°9 (2013). Ciao Piaggio restored

Adult and Child (2023) by Valentin Carron

Mark Handforth

Mark Handforth’s work is centred around the sculptural vocabulary of urban areas and familiar elements of day-to-day life (traffic signs, streetlamps, motor scooters, truck wheels, hydrants, neon tubes, or candles). He adapts them by either remodelling them or by replicating them in an often considerably larger scale—which, in many cases, creates uncertainty as to whether the pieces are ready-mades or not. This is irrelevant: Handforth does not pursue any documentary interests; rather than wanting to reproduce reality, he arranges familiar everyday elements in such a way that they create new points of reference.

Handforth will be showcasing a piece entitled Seal, a cast bronze sculpture with an internal steel structure, sitting on a concrete plinth.

Seal (2012) by Mark Handforth

Paintings 

Louise Gagliardi

New paintings by Zurich resident Louisa Gagliardi will be displayed inside the hotel.  Her works act as reflections – both of the artist and the viewer – and explore the rapid acceleration of technology in our visualised and socialised worlds. Their liminal status, as both digitally rendered images and physically confronting objects, speaks as much to contemporary concerns of self-mediated personas as they do to the compositions and narratives of the classics of art history.

Reunion (Room 7) (2025) by Louisa Gagliardi

This new series of works, entitled Reunion, has been specially created for Baur au Lac’s Salon I and II The liminal quality of hotels and conference rooms is a recurring theme in the artist’s work. These spaces are brought to life by the people and interactions that inhabit them for a short period of time. Each space transforms completely with each visitor, returning to a dormant, neutral space between them. By creating trompe-l’oeils that directly mirror the French doors in the room, the artist offers windows onto other fictional moments. The title, Reunion, evokes a gathering with people with whom one has a past history. Reunions can provoke a wide range of emotions; they can be joyful or dreadful.

While the openings depicted in the paintings are somewhat close to reality, they show surreal spaces that are sometimes vertiginously infinite. The characters inhabiting these spaces seem to be aware of each other’s presence without acknowledging it directly. Visitors are both observing and observed, invited and intruding.

Gigi Kracht

An avid art collector, member of the Guggenheim board and writer, Gigi Kracht lives between New York and Zurich and came up with the concept for Art In The Park 25 years ago during a meeting with the late Columbian artist and sculptor, Fernando Botero.  The artist was a personal friend of Gigi Kracht and frequent guest of the hotel.  It was while they were having breakfast on Baur au Lac’s scenic terrace that the concept for Art in The Park was born. Now with a firm international following, the event has established itself as a prelude to Art Basel, attracting art connoisseurs from all over the world.

Set within the tranquil surrounds of the leafy Baur au Lac Park, the one-of-a-kind outdoor exhibition champions both up and coming and established international artists, many of whom have gone on to become stars in their own right including Swiss artist, Nicolas Party.  In fact, there is a specially commissioned painting by Party of the hotel in his signature pastels hanging behind the front desk. Other Art in The Park alumni include William Kentridge, Martin Creed, Rita Ackermann, Joan Miró, Allen Jones, Mel Ramos, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Indiana, Jani Leinonen and Marco Perego, many of whom remain close friends of Gigi Kracht.

Incredible art and design are very much part of the DNA of Baur au Lac, reflecting true Swiss craftsmanship throughout the public areas and the 119 guest rooms and suites.  With many of the pieces handpicked by Gigi Kracht via her close connections with the art-world as well as personal relationships with the artists.  Highlights include bespoke pieces from US-Born Rashid Johnson and Brooklyn-based Matthew Day Jackson located in Baur’s Brasserie. The walls of the guest rooms are also adorned with Le Corbusier lithographs and photographs from Alberto Giacometti and René Groebli.

Art In The Park runs from 16th June to 23rd July 2025, open daily in the Baur au Lac Park.  The exhibition is complimentary to guests of the hotel.  External visitors are able to access the exhibition following a drinking or dining experience in one of the hotel’s bars and restaurants.