the show that never opened
Galerie SOON, Zurich
September – October 2025

“the show that never opened” is a spontaneously conceived and short-term arranged exhibition made up of loose fragments and freely combined found objects from the studio of Peter Baracchi, presented at Galerie SOON in Zurich. Rather than a finished presentation, it positions itself as an open experiment.

The exhibition drifts only loosely along various concepts and thematic fields. At its core is not a clear narrative, but rather a curatorial attitude strongly oriented toward visual-aesthetic principles: arrangements arise from moments of chance, from the juxtaposition of materials, from ruptures and transitions.

For many years, Baracchi’s artistic practice has been concerned with processes of transformation. The starting point of his works is usually the immediate and the everyday: objects, traces, and residues produced within our urban environment. He collects, isolates, and alienates these found materials, transferring them into new contexts in which they lose their functionality and, as artistic objects or installations, acquire another, often ambiguous, legibility.

At the center of the exhibition at SOON are absence and reduction. In his most recent series of works, Baracchi has engaged intensively with the concept of emptiness:

An empty room, an empty mind, an empty canvas. Emptiness as opportunity, emptiness as threat, emptiness as a form in its own right.

The resulting works develop a restrained yet striking language of allusion. They are pieces that do not impose themselves but rely on resonance; works that open a space of projection for the viewer and place perception itself at the center. Shapes, traces, geometry, light, and shadow thus become the true protagonists – reduced, yet still charged with tension and meaning.