MASI Lugano have released their initial programme for 2026.
K-NOW! Korean Video Art Today 8th March – 19th July 2026
MASI Lugano will present K-Now! Korean Video Art Today, an exhibition dedicated to South Korea’s contemporary art scene, explored through the medium of video art. The project, realised in collaboration with Je Yun Moon, former deputy director of the Art Sonje Center in Seoul, brings together eight artists and collectives from a new generation who, balancing technological experimentation with narrative urgency, tackle themes of identity, memory, and the social transformation of a country that in just a few decades has risen from the devastation of war to become a global power.
The exhibition offers an immersive journey through works ranging from historical storytelling to speculative narratives, from symbolic landscapes to digital performance, inviting audiences to reflect on the evolution of video art in a present where moving images transcend all boundaries. K-Now! is not only an opportunity to discover contemporary Korean art but also an invitation to broaden one’s perspective on the international art scene, recognising the meeting of diverse horizons as one of the vital forces that continue to shape today’s art. Artists featured in the exhibition: Chan-Kyong Park, Jane Jin Kaisen, Ayoung Kim, ??eobchae, Onejoon Che, Sojung Jun, Sungsil Ryu, Heecheon Kim
Jean-Frédéric Schnyder. La pittura 2024/25 15th March – 9th August 2026
An exhibition dedicated to Jean-Frédéric Schnyder (Basel, 1945), one of the most original and influential artists of the contemporary Swiss scene. Active since the 1960s, Schnyder has traversed decades of artistic research while maintaining a profile that is at once discreet and central. His work spans a variety of genres and styles, employing a language that combines irony, poetry, and experimentation, exploring everyday reality with a free and personal perspective.
The exhibition brings together a new cycle of paintings created over the past two years, including small en plein air landscapes executed in the mountainous regions of Switzerland. Alongside these recent works, two iconic creations are presented: the series Billige Bilder (Cheap Pictures, 2000–2019) and the monumental Stilleben (Still Life, 1970). The exhibition thus offers an opportunity to explore the work of an artist who, with consistency and independence, has renewed contemporary painting, considering the creative process as an essential element of the work itself, and has contributed significantly to the evolution of Swiss art over the past decades.
Jean-Frédéric Schnyder (1945, Basel; lives in Zug) trained as a photographer before producing his first works in the realms of conceptual art and Pop Art in the 1960s. In 1969, Harald Szeemann invited him to participate in the exhibition When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle Bern. In 1972, he took part in documenta 5 in Kassel, and ten years later in documenta 7. With a heterogeneous and original body of work spanning styles and genres, he became a key reference for younger generations. In 1993, he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. Among his most important solo exhibitions are those at the Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunstmuseum Bern, and the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau.
Kaari Upson. Dollhouse 6th September- 10th January 2027
The first major posthumous retrospective dedicated to the American artist Kaari Upson (1970–2021), one of the most intense and original voices in contemporary American art. The exhibition, the final stop of an international tour that included the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Kunsthalle Mannheim, offers a comprehensive overview of an artistic practice that redefined the boundaries between personal experience and collective dimension.
Through sculpture, video, drawing, and installation, Upson developed a layered body of work centred on themes such as identity, the body, relationships, illness, and loss. With an investigative—and at times obsessive—gaze, the artist transformed objects and domestic spaces into repositories of experiences and traumas, creating a dense and unsettling creative universe in which reality merges with imagination, and everyday life with alienation, offering a portrait that is at once intimate and universal of the contemporary psyche.
The exhibition includes emblematic works, including series linked to the renowned Larry Project (2005–2012), which indelibly marked the beginning of her career, and the monumental installation THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OUTSIDE (2017–2019), presented for the first time at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
Kaari Upson (1970–2021) lived and worked in Los Angeles and New York. Her work has been the focus of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023, 2007), Deste Foundation, Athens (2022), Kunsthalle Basel and Kunstverein Hannover (2019), and the New Museum, New York (2017). She participated in numerous group exhibitions and international biennials, including the 58th and 59th Venice Biennales (2019, 2022), the Whitney Biennial (2017), and the 15th Istanbul Biennale (2017), as well as exhibitions at institutions such as Kunstmuseum Basel, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, SFMOMA, Cleveland Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, CAPC Bordeaux, Belvedere 21, Vienna, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
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