Reviews

Samuel Haitz

Notes on the New Floors at Helmhaus, Zurich

Installation view: Lynne Gbodjrou Kouassi, salbung, Helmhaus, Zürich. Photo: Studio Massimiliano Rossetto.

For a while, my Instagram algorithm mostly showed me DIY home renovations. In that bubble, millennial beige and other muted tones currently dominate; often, things that were already ok end up being made worse by these coats of paint. The names of the colour palettes from the seemingly monopolistic—or at least omnipresent—German manufacturer range from “Weiss mit Vanille” [white with vanilla] to “Blau mit Nacht” [blue with night]. 

As part of her work Grund (2026), the central piece of the exhibition salbung at Helmhaus in Zurich, Lynne Gbodjrou Kouassi has had the previously bright white floor painted in a shade that, at the aforementioned manufacturer, would probably be called something like “purple with lavender” or “purple with lilac.”

For a little over twenty years, Helmhaus has been quite white; in 2004, the formerly (deliberately) dark grey, bureaucratic-looking floors were painted over in the white tone of the exhibition walls (RAL 9010) as part of Norma Jeane’s exhibition Body Proxy.

With her permanent intervention in purple, Kouassi now wants to create spaces in which visitors feel comfortable. But isn’t the perception of a space as “pleasant” highly subjective? I, for one, found the previous use of a single neutral colour for walls and floors quite nice, and thought the conditions it created worked well for many kinds of art. Colour entered the building in many ways; through the windows, through the exhibited works, and through the visitors themselves. Helmhaus was certainly never a dull, monotonous, monochrome institution.

White floors in white cubes are actually rather rare. The glossy white floor at Helmhaus stood out, you became aware of its presence upon entering, but it could also almost disappear, giving space to changing exhibitions without inscribing itself too much into them.

Installation view: Lynne Gbodjrou Kouassi, salbung, Helmhaus, Zürich. Photo: Studio Massimiliano Rossetto.

The concept of the white cube, which Kouassi’s Grund engages with, along with some of its aspects often perceived as problematic, was explained in an introduction to the exhibition that I happened to wander into. The curator, Daniel Morgenthaler, who was present, noted that the purple floor may, of course, be covered if necessary, but must not be painted over. The fact that Kouassi’s dominant work is a permanent installation, one that all artists exhibiting in these spaces in the coming years will have to contend with, is laid out in the Bodenfarbvereinbarung (2026) [Floor Colour Agreement].

This “agreement” seems intended as a softer version of a contract, yet it simultaneously addresses “esteemed visitors” directly, informing them that “the floor of Helmhaus now permanently shines in a new colour.” Between the circularly arranged signatures of the Helmhaus director, the curator, and the artist, a small snail, rendered graphically, is placed. I find this purple-framed non-contract, which reads more like a press release, and the snail rather cute, but ultimately somewhat indecisive. The agreement further states that the floor colour may only be permanently changed again under a new Helmhaus director. According to the agreement, the next floor colour may not be the former RAL 9010.

From the exhibition text, I take the analysis that white is a normative colour (which is, of course, true), from exhibition spaces to skin tones. The equation of pure white in exhibition architecture with light skin tones (which are obviously not, in fact, white) is not something I fully grasp; beyond the reference to normativity, the connection remains unclear to me.

Beyond aesthetic and practical concerns, I mainly find myself wondering about the conceptual indeterminacy of this work: why this particular purple? Is the choice simply subjective? Is the shade meant to be a feminist statement? I find no indication of that in the accompanying materials. Or is the point simply that it is not white? And if the issue really is the normative use of white in exhibition spaces, then why are the walls—unlike floors, actually white in most contemporary exhibitions by default—left untouched by this artistic intervention?

Originally published in German on Reading Rämistrasse, the art criticism blog of Kunsthalle Zürich.