Campus - 27.03.2025 - 13:30
Los Angeles is burning, glaciers are melting, lakes are drying up. The bad news is endless. The topic of climate change is omnipresent. And yet for many people, it remains strangely abstract. As if climate change only ever takes place somewhere else, while it is simply getting pleasantly warmer here. In this situation, art is one way of creating images that remain and encourage reflection. That is why the University of St.Gallen is expanding its art collection. The initiative comes from students and the financing is provided by affiliated foundations. The opening was supported by the city of St.Gallen as part of the campaign "Gemeinsam wirkt – St.Gallen wird klimaneutral".
In “Haus Washington”, seven of the ten climate art photographs from Switzerland and abroad that have already been financed were inaugurated. These are presented in pairs and cover the four topics: Animals, Forest, Water and Glaciers. An additional work of art from Appenzell was inaugurated at the Rosenbergstrasse 30 building.
In his address, HSG President Manuel Ammann emphasised that the inauguration of these works differs from the previous "art in architecture" tradition at the University of St.Gallen. The exhibition was the result of inspiration from students who studied the influence of art on environmental solutions in the Master's certificate programme "Managing Climate Solution" under the direction of HSG Professor Rolf Wüstenhagen. Yvette Sánchez had presented the ideas to the HSG's Art Commission, where their realisation was pursued, explained the President. Their initiative has made the now permanent exhibition of climate art possible, which is now open to the public.
All seven works in the ”Haus Washington” at Rosenbergstrasse 20-22 belong to the same genre: photography – or, in a broader sense, works with a photographic effect, including artistic paper silhouettes. The art exhibition begins on the ground floor of the building with the theme Animals.
Ground floor: animals and human influence
At the entrance, the artist Francisco Sierra (b. 1977, Mexico) has installed his oil miniatures of Betta splendens (Siamese fighting fish). Painted in a photorealistic style (without stencils) on pieces of wood, the bred ornamental fish were mounted on the wall in concave niches.
The fish miniatures will soon be placed directly next to the drawings of insects and fish by the Zurich artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger (born 1944). Since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, she has been travelling to radioactively contaminated areas. On closer inspection of the watercolours, the deformations and damage that the mutated creatures have suffered in the contaminated regions become apparent.
Ground floor and first floor: forest art photography
In a large alcove next to the rear entrance of the building and directly above it on the first floor, visitors will find forest art photographs by the Swiss artists Monica Ursina Jäger (b. 1974) and Olaf Breuning (b. 1970), who both work internationally – Breuning has been based in New York for over two decades and Jäger divides her time between Zurich and London (she grew up in St.Gallen).
Breuning's ”Complaining Forest” transforms pieces of wood into speech bubbles that allow the forest itself to speak – a silent protest against environmental destruction. Jäger's ”Topographies” presents Singapore's green lung and dense high-rise social housing in delicate collages – it remains unclear which absorbs which: the city nature or vice versa.
First floor: glaciers and climate change
On the first floor of the Haus Washington, works by two Swiss artists on the subject of glaciers can be seen: Laurence Piaget-Dubuis (b. 1971) from Valais and Daniela Keiser (b. 1963) from Zurich.
Keiser's work “The Tongue in Translation” shows two glacier tongues in shades of blue using an elaborate cyanotype technique. Eco-artist Piaget-Dubuis presents her photograph of the Rhône Glacier, protected with a white cloth and bisected by the ladder and light.
Fourth floor: water and climate solutions
One piece so far is dedicated to the topic of water scarcity. The Canadian artist Francesca Gabbiani (b. 1965, Montreal, lives in Los Angeles) works with gouache, an opaque watercolour paint, as a background, onto which she applies intricately cut coloured paper. Her two works address the forest fires in her neighbourhood: “2018 Trancas Canyon” shows a devastated landscape in Malibu, while she has given the burning palm trees the title “Dear Yvette” because this name was associated with the yew tree – a tree that has stood for centuries as a symbol of resilience and immortality.
The following works by two Italian artists were also mentioned, but have not yet been exhibited: Armin Linke (b. 1966) was originally to be represented by a photograph of the dried-up Aral Sea, but then changed to a photograph that presents an actual climate solution with an ecological rice seed bank in Bangladesh.
These are joined by three photographs by the award-winning (including World Press Photo 2023) photographer Simone Tramonte (born 1976). His series “Net Zero Transition” focuses on the contrast between a photovoltaic system naturally embedded in the landscape and artificially illuminated greenhouses.
Rosenbergstrasse 30: circular economy
After visiting all the works in Haus Washington, the guests went to Rosenbergstrasse 30. This is where the regional up-and-coming artist Florian Schoch has installed his relief “Final Sprint” (2020). The title “Final Sprint” can be read as a cipher for many students who are moving towards the end of their studies. The work was created from recycled material from a construction site and a climbing belt.
At the end of the Climate Art Vernissage, the students set another strong example: with a light projection onto the glass cube at St.Gallen's main station. This projection makes the development of global warming visible. It shows the so-called climate stripes – a visual representation of temperature changes over time since 1864. Each line represents a year – from cool blue for past, milder years to bright red for the increasingly warmer times of the present. And right in the middle of it all is the binary clock – its ticking makes the progression of change unmistakable.
The Master's certificate programme "Managing Climate Solutions (MaCS-HSG)" at the University of St.Gallen combines science, practice and creativity to develop innovative climate protection solutions. In interdisciplinary projects, students deal with real challenges – from political strategies to artistic impulses. They have not only worked on the current permanent exhibition of artworks but have also actively shaped the climate discourse with the light projection – and brought it out of the theoretical realm and into the public space.
Images: Florian Pecher | MaCS-HSG
