If I was a rich girl

An exhibition by Clare Kenny featuring her fantasy collection.

For her new exhibition at Kunstraum Riehen, the artist Clare Kenny (*1976) explores the theme of exhibiting in a comprehensive way.

Under the title If I was a rich girl, Kenny generously invites us into her personal dream collection of artworks, which she borrows from renowned collections. Instead of just dreaming about it, the native Englishwoman realizes her vision and makes it real, even if only for a limited period of time. She transforms the art space into a "better" version of itself as a setting for the borrowed works. Kenny, a master of rhetorical form and skilled in the art of deception, creates works in Riehen that are both site-specific and realized in relation to the exhibits. Using affordable materials and various interior design techniques such as marbling, wood grain, fresco and staffage, which were used both contemporarily and historically to furnish and embellish rooms, she addresses the function of "furnishing". Kenny cites a series of codes that represent membership of certain social classes. An idea of what "being rich" - or, above all, the dream of it - could mean aesthetically gives rise to a look.

Courtesy: Fotomuseum Winterthur, Fondation Beyeler, Galerie Gisèle Linder, Von Bartha, Annely Juda Fine Art