Exhibition JEANNETTE VOGEL open art museum

The exhibition JEANNETTE VOGEL at the open art museum St.Gallen shows expressive animal drawings by the artist, who works with colored pencil, felt-tip pen and paper. Her unconventional animal motifs - from rhinoceroses to zoo animals - appear direct and at the same time enraptured.

Jeannette Vogel loves to draw animals. No other motif plays a greater role in her work. In her characteristic simplistic style, she draws a wide range of native animals. Or exotic animals that she sees on trips to the zoo or circus. She uses colored pencil, felt-tip pen and paper. The only collage on display shows a rhinoceros. Jeannette Vogel usually places her creatures in the middle of the page. They stand for themselves and manage to fill the empty space with their presence with ease. Some appear rather awkward, others are so voluminous that they push against the boundaries of the leaf. The assignment to a species is often unclear and ultimately irrelevant. Where it seems important to the artist, she adds the names. If the classifying view recedes into the background, the individual expression takes on more weight: the creatures appear curious, self-confident, caught out, shy, sad, tired and as bold as if they were getting ready to jump out of the picture and lead a life of their own. The humans remain insignificant compared to the animals, reduced to outlines and without personality.

Not much is known about Jeannette Vogel. The little information available comes from a text accompanying an art exhibition at the EPI Clinic in Zurich. It says that she has “many original traits”. This statement is not elaborated on. Jeannette Vogel has suffered from epilepsy since she was one year old and lives in the EPI Clinic Zurich because of her condition. In 2019, the open art museum received a collection of 188 drawings from the clinic as a donation.

Parallel to the exhibition JEANNETTE VOGEL, the exhibition ICH TIER WIR presents an artistic examination of the human-animal relationship at the open art museum St.Gallen. In an interdisciplinary interplay of outsider art and contemporary art, familiar models of thought are broken up and transformed into an open, cross-cultural dialog.