AN EXHIBITION IN SWITZERLAND EXAMINED THE NATURE — AND THE JOY — OF CHANGE

by Edward M. Gómez

For those who find illumination and maybe also guidance in aphorisms and fortune-cookie wisdom, that old French chestnut, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more they stay the same”), describes a supposedly unshakable truth about reality, one which, implicitly, is or should be somewhat obvious, too. Except, of course, when it finds itself bucking up against a revolution.

Such a spirit of change — gradual and subtle, or rapid and forceful, and, often, deeply personal and determined — served as the central theme of Chrysalide: le rêve du papillon (Chrysalis: The Dream of the Butterfly), one of this year’s most intriguing contemporary-art exhibitions. It was presented from January 25 through June 11, 2023, at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, a venue in Geneva, in southwestern Switzerland, that is one of that central-European country’s high-profile showcases for cutting-edge and experimental art forms. Geneva is well known as a very international city; it’s the home of numerous United Nations agencies and of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), an intergovernmental organization that operates the world’s largest particle physics laboratory.

Just as the scientists at CERN are known for their focus on the character and behavior of subatomic particles, the artists whose works were featured in Chrysalide could be seen as investigators of the depths of the psyche in which