VIVIAN SUTER AND PANAJACHEL, GUATEMALA
The European exile of Vivian Suter in Guatemala and her extraction from any urban way of living is undeniably and deeply rooted in her work and its process. The former coffee plantation where she lives and works since the early eighties is a direct source of information and inspiration of all her artistic research. Without her tropical garden and her dogs, the practice of Suter wouldn’t be possible as the whole ambiant towards her is a central component of the art.
Suter (born Viviana Aidé Wild) moved in Panajachel a lakeside town near Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, in 1983. Born in Buenos Aires in 1949, Suter and her parents left Argentina in 1962 as the country is facing rising antisemitism, during the Peron regime, and settled in Basel, Vivian Suter’s father birthplace. She studied painting in Basel and it is 1982, after her first major group exhibition at the Kunsthalle, Basel, that Suter visited Latin America abs decided to settle in Guatemala a year later. Everything there from the climate, the vegetation, the animals is somehow central to her artistic work. To this day, she maintains a daily painting practice working in a studio situated uphill from her house. The entire property functions as a garden—a living, evolving space where vegetation continuously grows and dies, and new structures emerge over time.
SNAKE NIGHTS
Her current show at Karma International, titled Snake Nights, curated by Adam Szymczyk, takes its name from a multilingual poem-montage featuring Suter’s handwritten notes in Spanish, German, and English. This poem appeared in the catalog for her significant exhibition Disco at Palais de Tokyo (named after her dog), which originated at MAAT in Lisbon and is now on view at Carré d’Art in Nîmes.
For the installation in the gallery, the display architecture was designed by Tokyo-based architect Hiroyuki Kimura, following his display concept for Suter’s presentation in the loggia of The Okura Museum of Art as part of What Is Real?, an exhibition curated by Adam Szymczyk for Art Week Tokyo (5-9.11.2025). The free canvases by Suter are floating in the gallery space producing a feeling of vitality and strength and recreating in a way, the luxurious atmosphere of her studio in Panajachel.
Untitled, undated, the works make their own path and could be hung vertically or horizontally, there is no rule to be followed. Sometimes they are painted on both sides and they carry with them the traces of Suter’s life in and out the studio: oil, acrylic paint, pigments but also botanical matter and jungle-based micro organisms that are fully incorporated in the pieces. Some are very physical and burst energy throughout the use of strong and vivid colors while some other are quite minimal and composed with juste one or two softer colors but in any case the viewer is fully engaged with the experience and the vital feeling that emerge from them.
On view until February 7th, 2026 at Karma International, Weststrasse 70 & 75, 8003 Zürich
https://karmainternational.ch/
Untitled, n.d.
Mixed media on canvas
237 x 178 cm
93 1/4 x 70 1/8 in
Untitled, n.d.
Mixed media on canvas
175 x 175 cm
68 7/8 x 68 7/8 in
Untitled, n.d.
Mixed media on canvas
260 x 175 cm
102 3/8 x 68 7/8 in
Untitled, n.d.
Mixed media on canvas
225 x 175 cm
88 5/8 x 68 7/8 in