The exhibition consists of works from the Aargauer Kunsthaus Collection, ranging from the early 20th century to today, and revolves around the genre of still-life painting. This term was coined in the 17th century when still-life painting became very popular, but the tradition of artistically representing an arrangement of silent, immobile, indeed lifeless things extends back to Antiquity. Down through the centuries, the still-life has been used to express different artistic concerns – the objects in these paintings were often symbolically charged or else used for aesthetic studies of colour and form.

The exhibition begins with Cuno Amiet, whose arrangement of oranges is a classical still-life with fruit. In Amiet’s painting the objects are not carriers of meaning, instead they provided this enthusiastic colourist with an opportunity to undertake some painterly research. In Fischli / Weiss, by contrast, the silent things are examined as to their history and meaning. This three-dimensional assemblage of banal utility-items, such as rubber boots and brushes, also provides evidence of an extended grasp of the genre of the still-life, in keeping with the intention of the exhibition. This formal and thematic exploration of silent things opens up exciting access routes to what on the surface seems unspectacular.