Intoxicated by Colour

Staging solo shows of (product) designers during their lifetime in renowned museums tends to be the exception so Claudia Caviezel was all the more delighted when she was given the chance to present her extensive oeuvre in the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Sometime beforehand, Christian Brändle, the Museum director had visited her in her studio in St. Gallen, relates the 46-year-old. While the world was in the grips of the Covid-19 lockdown, the Swiss designer worked with curator Damian Fopp to develop the concept for the exhibition, which is deliberately not chronological. "Most of all I wanted the show to convey a specific feeling," says Caviezel.

There’s no overlooking the designer’s love of colors, patterns and textures. The exhibition space in the Museum für Gestaltung on the Toni Areal, which is some 300 square meters in size and has a very high ceiling, is bathed in intense hues, flowers and animals wander across the walls, photos are mounted provisionally on the wall with adhesive tape, and a little glamor and glitter is also a must. Nowhere would you guess that Caviezel almost got cold feet, because she initially felt the exhibition space was too big and unsuitable for presenting her works. That said, unlike in previous shows here, the space was not divided up. Caviezel also purpose-created some site-specific works for the exhibition as can be seen in the museum foyer. A monumental textile installation comprising swathes of fabric with an abstract pattern some 30 meters in length adorns the large entrance hall of the Toni Areal. She explains that her four-year old daughter helped design the large format called "Calliope". The designer loves her work to be spontaneous and experimental, and she moves seemingly effortlessly between traditional craftsmanship and digital technology.

The fact that the exhibition has such a casual and airy feel is down to Caviezel’s unusual creative ideas. For example, there is a shelf filled with spools of yarn, benches made from rolls of carpet, and cardboard boxes containing fabric and all kinds of other samples. Everything stems from Caviezel’s marionette studio in her house in St. Gallen designed by the architects Fuhrimann Hächler, and which she moved into five years ago. Another striking feature of the exhibition layout consists of the large tables lined up one behind the other, which draw the eye deep into the room. They are original screen-printing tables that she came across in a print shop, relates Caviezel. For the exhibition they were fitted with screen printing frames and serve as display cases for designs, sketches, and documents. As such, the exhibition design is sustainable and "nothing was produced simply to be thrown away later," she adds.

The exhibition begins where the designer’s career kicked off: with her graduation project at the Lucerne School of Art and Design for which shewas awarded the Swiss Design Prize by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture in 2003 and which marked the launch of a brilliant career. With "Tape it", the designer developed experimental works in which glued seams and adhesive tape were employed rather than a needle and thread. In addition to the decorative effect, the designs were intended for use in fashion as well as in interior design. And in the years that followed Caviezel remained loyal to fashion. She designed fabrics for the collections of St. Gallen-based textile manufacturer Jakob Schlaepfer and worked for Swiss fashion label Akris. Schlaepfer designs, such as "Westwood Cats" from Vivienne Westwood’s prêt-à-porter collections from 2009 and 2011, can be seen in the tabletop display cases. Caviezel created "Nebula", a design for Akris, by means of a photogram, which relies on light to produce an image without a camera. In addition to being employed as an in-house designer Caviezel has always simultaneously freelanced as a designer, producing works for Atelier Pfister under the supervision of Alfredo Häberli – including patterned vases, dishes, and bed linen. The fact that her ideas are also extremely colorful and feature rich patterns is demonstrated in the exhibition by a material trolley piled up with cushions, which seems to invite visitors to engage in a pillow fight.

Claudia Caviezel was quick to gain a foothold in textile design, partly because her graduation thesis had already attracted a great deal of attention and "functioned as a door opener for me," as she puts it. "I was basically lucky," she says and adds that textile design offers a wide range of work opportunities from fashion through to architecture and interior design, and quips: "I’ve always found that diversity pretty cool."

"Claudia Caviezel: Caleidoscope"
runs till Jan. 7, 2024

Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Toni-Areal
Pfingst­weid­strasse 96
8005 Zürich
Switzerland

Opening Times:
Tuesday–Sunday 10 a.m.– 5p.m.
Thursday 10 a.m.– 8 p.m.
Closed on Mondays