BALLY foundation's inaugural exhibition in lugano invites visitors to a world of introspection

BALLY Foundation opens in Lugano, Switzerland

From April 2023, the BALLY Foundation will be housed in the ‘Villa Heleneum,’ a 1930s building on the shores of Lake Lugano in Switzerland, surrounded by lush gardens and scenic mountains. The opening of the new building, entirely dedicated to the landscape, will be accompanied by the inaugural exhibition ‘Un lac inconnu’ (An Unknown Lake), which will explore the narrative potential of the region, its history, and its myths, highlighting the existing permeability of the relationship between ‘interiority and exteriority’.

At the DAAily bar talk with Douglas Mandry and BALLY during Milan Design Week 2022, Nicolas Girotto, CEO of the Swiss luxury fashion house, described Villa Heleneum as an open space that can host a dialogue between the brands and the world of art. Although he mentioned that the foundation was scheduled to open in September 2023, the opening will actually take place much earlier. For the full conversation, see designboom’s coverage, here.

Villa Heleneum in Lugano | image by Valentina Casalini

An Unknown Lake

The ‘Un lac inconnu’ exhibition is ‘first and foremost an invitation to the landscapes and surrounding nature to penetrate the interior of the place,’ as the BALLY Foundation shares. The show aims to break down the boundaries between inside and outside, questioning the different relationships between humans and the environment. Giant flowers lead guests to this inner garden, followed by half-human, half-plant figures, snails, feathered animals, or any other landscape, real or fantastic, from memory or the future, imagined or imaginary.

But even more than an experience that encourages us to observe our surroundings, the exhibition is an immersion into ourselves. ‘Faced with the landscape at a standstill, the phenomenon of contemplation allows for synchronicity: a common vibration between what is happening outside and inside, deep within each of us,’ the Swiss luxury fashion house representatives explain.

the building settles on the shores of Lake Lugano, surrounded by lush gardens and scenic mountains | image by Andrea Rossetti

‘Un lac inconnu is particularly concerned with giving body and voice to the underlying: to the subconscious, to memory, to the cracks and images that inhabit us, which are equally wonderful and disturbing. The inner voices of the lake, those of Villa Heleneum, their geographies, their memories, their histories and their myths—as well as our own—are thereby interwoven in a superimposition of narrative and temporal frameworks halfway between dream and reality. Bringing together more than twenty international artists, Un lac inconnu is a poetic wander through submerged and emerged landscapes. An attempt to connect with to oneself and the world,’ the team at BALLY Foundation shares.

the architecture of the structure dates back to the 1930s | image by Valentina Casalini