In Labile Stabilität, the Swiss artist Jos Näpflin focuses on the ongoing engagement with everyday objects transformed into ambiguous spaces of experience while playfully referencing the existentialism of everyday life. Presenting the works throughout the gallery space as a metaphorical book, the artist addresses several themes, such as the delicate stability or instability of societies in change, memento mori, and the universality of the difficult paths walked in life.
The focus and title of the exhibition reference the artwork Labile Stability, Or Just Hold Your Breath, 2026, and reflect the abstract unsettling senses of the contemporaneous times we live in. Using visual playfulness, everyday objects lose their pedestrian meaning, and viewers can meditate on the feeling of expansiveness and being unable to control life's processes.
Functioning as a conceptual frame for the exhibition are fifty-three photographs arranged horizontally throughout the gallery, Sometimes You Die, 2018. With a text about living in the presence accompanying the work, the artist creates a contemporary personal memento mori highlighting the characteristics of the individual despite the structural conformity necessary for cultivation by civilization.
Although his newest works demonstrate the artist's cultural and personal biography, the universality of the human condition serves as his lingua franca, carving out a path to reframe perspective—creating visual senses through memories and emotion that are common to all.
The exhibition will be on view from September 9 – October 24, 2026.
Jos Näpflin (b. 1950 in Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland) is a Swiss contemporary artist based in Zürich. Näpflin developed his artistic practice independently and is largely self-taught. Since the early 1980s, he has worked across sculpture, installation, photography, and conceptual art, creating works that investigate themes of memory, human presence, spirituality, and social tension through the use of everyday and industrial materials.
He has exhibited widely in Switzerland and internationally, including presentations at the Nidwaldner Museum, Stans; Kunstmuseum Luzern; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; and Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, among others. His notable exhibitions include The Black Box Box, which explored the relationship between compassion and violence through immersive installation environments, as well as numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe that have established him as an important voice in contemporary Swiss art.
Näpflin has received several Swiss cultural grants and awards, including the Werkjahr of the Frey-Näpflin Foundation in 2020. His works are held in public and private collections across Switzerland.
Jos Näpflin
Labile Stabilität oder einfach den Atem anhalten, 2026
Holz, Metall, Spielbälle, Bleistift, Farbe
ca. 210 x 140 x 25 cm
All images: Courtesy of the artist