Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 : Kabinett: Albrecht Schnider

At Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, Galerie Thomas Schulte presents eight small-scale landscape paintings by Albrecht Schnider made between 2023 and 2026. The landscapes of the Alps, which burned themselves into Albrecht Schnider’s visual memory while he was growing up in the hinterland of Lucerne in Switzerland, have long been a constant motif in his oeuvre—whether living in Rome, Brussels, Berlin, or since returning to Lake Thun in 2021. Instead of attempting to portray them, Schnider constructs and configures them, omitting any sign of human activity or natural details, practicing total reduction. What remains are puzzle-like color fields that generate a neutralized, fictionalized landscape. This almost computer-like environment reveals that landscapes are constructed; they are the result of constant (re-)negotiation and a medium for memories, longings, and angst. Rather than a depiction of the Swiss Alps, what we encounter on Schnider’s canvas is a distillation of a collective euphoric recall of their splendor. The hills and valleys of this platonic terrain serve as a projection space for nostalgia, belonging, identity, and pride. At the same time, the artificial stillness of these scenes evokes loss and barrenness, reflecting Schnider’s conflicted relation to landscape painting and the possibility that both the genre and its subject may one day cease to exist