enSoie

Chantal Kaufmann
LUSH
curated by Julia Künzi

5 June–19 July 2026
open by appointment
Opening 5 June 2026, 5pm

When I think of Baroque, the terms “revealing and concealing” appear over my head like a speech balloon. To expose and to hide, to function as a code—such as the stucco in the Höscheller Room, guarding the people who slept in this former bedroom, and more recently, observing the designers in the sewing studio. A higher realm of creatures, fruit bouquets, ornaments invoking transience, mortality, or earthly delights. A ceiling that was once considered the most ornate in Zürich, only to be covered for centuries by layers of paint before being restored in 2003 by the current owners.

For this space, Chantal Kaufmann has for the first time decided to show only paintings, despite having had a painterly practice for some years. The apricots on the canvases are distorted excerpts taken from a still life by Louise Moillon. Moillon herself was a Parisian artist from a family of painters, her compositions highly regarded in her time. She specialized in luscious fruit servings: overflowing, rich, glossy, dripping, arranged in juxtapositions on tables, drawing the eye and exciting the appetite. She stopped painting shortly after getting married in the 1640s. Like many women artists of her time, Moillon—despite her prominence during her lifetime—was long marginalized within the canon of art history and has only recently begun to be reinserted into its narrative.

The choice of having both paintings standing in the room like visitors themselves seemed daring to Chantal and me, a bit eccentric. Their awkward legs turn the works into stands, emphasizing the notion of a presentation: they are showing themselves off! They are taking up too much space and shift the configuration of how paintings are to be looked at, conservatively speaking. They impose themselves on us. Drop the false shame! So we try to lay it all bare, to make the point that revelation always involves the choice to hide certain parts, to consciously or unconsciously not show or speak about some of it.
Chantal and I have been close friends and supporters of each other, navigating life together since our late twenties.

– Julia Künzi

We would like to thank Jakob Buchner and Sandro Brun for their support, Pierre Lumineau, Sophie Meier and enSoie for the invitation and for hosting.

HÖSCHELLER ROOM
c/o enSoie
Strehlgasse 26
via Lindentreppe
8001 Zürich

The opening event is organized in cooperation with @kiosk.cafe.bar

Photos by Linda Suter