Im Volksgarten has been the address of Kunsthaus Glarus since 1952; it serves as both street name and location description. Im Volksgarten, 8750 Glarus is also the title of a site-specific work by Maria Eichhorn, on view recently as a loan along with works from the Glarner Kunstverein collections. Painted nearly invisibly on the wall, the address declared the museum as a site that took temporary possession of the work. In the exhibition Im Volksgarten, the understanding of “possession” goes beyond the object and is returned to the space: it is about forms of taking possession of space, but also about fetishization and desire. How is the status of objects and things altered when they enter the museum? How do these things seduce us? What significance does the private and intimate have in this public realm. But also: what social or political and public meanings do we associate with the museum?

The two-winged modernist building of the museum is located at the edge of the Volksgarten, a lush city park that was stocked with exoticized flora at the end of the nineteenth century. It is idyllic and full of contrasts at the same time: life on the outside varies from that within. The Kunsthaus was renovated last year; the structure of the heritage-protected building was upgraded, refurbished and, where permitted, brought up to the latest technical standards. At the same time, infrastructural and safety regulations had to be implemented in publicly accessible areas. What kind of independent existence does the physical shell of the museum have? And, conversely, how do we, visitors and artists, hold sway over or control this shell? The museum must continually reexamine these questions without getting caught up in a state of idle institutional critique. 

Exhibition text
Rachal Bradley's Salvation in Those Walls or Who took the bomp from the Bompalompalomp Who took the ram from the Ramalamadingdong