CASPER FAASSEN – RECOLLECTION: Zurich

Opening and talk: Thursday, 29 October, 18:30 – 20:00, Bildhalle Zurich

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Michaela Oberhofer, Curator of African and Oceanic Art and Deputy Head of the Curatorial Department at Museum Rietberg, as our guest speaker at the exhibition opening, alongside the artist Casper Faassen.

ReCollection forms the second chapter of Bildhalle’s two-part exhibition devoted to Casper Faassen’s artistic practice. The longstanding project grew out of the artist’s profound interest in collecting, memory and the value we assign to objects.

Through a process Faassen calls “ReCollecting”, he traces dispersed cultural objects and reimagines them through his distinctive visual language, examining how Western museum collections have been formed and how cultural authority has been historically constructed. Presented in crates that evoke the transport and trade of cultural goods and veiled by translucent surfaces marked with craquelure, the objects photographed by Faassen become sculptural “memories in transit”. They acquire an almost tangible presence, yet remain tantalisingly out of reach.

While the colonial history of Faassen’s native Netherlands forms an important point of reference,
ReCollection continually evolves in response to the places in which it is presented. Faassen researches local collections and histories, creating connections that bring wider questions of collecting, ownership and restitution into a specific context. Among the objects and histories he has explored are the Benin Bronzes at Museum Rietberg, a stolen Modigliani painting stored for years at the Geneva Freeport, as well as looted artworks and smuggled antiquities.

The exhibition runs until 21 November 2026.