What Remains — Lo que permanece

Lo que permanece A curated exhibition by Valeria Viollaz 7 November . 2 December 2026
The mep · Lucerne, Switzerland

What Remains is an exhibition about the memory of materials and the time that objects hold within them.

Bringing together works by artists from Spain, Japan and Switzerland, the exhibition proposes a dialogue between cultures that share a single conviction: that beauty is not a surface effect but a consequence of integrity. That certain objects do not age — they mature. That what a material has passed through — fire, time, the hand, use — is not a mark of wear but proof that something real occurred.

Stone, pigment, clay, linen. Materials that time does not consume but deepens. Works that do not represent permanence — they are it.

— Valeria Viollaz, Curator

Hiroshi Aoki at work — Yamaguchi, Japan. What Remains, VV Interior Home, 2026.

Hiroshi Aoki · Japan

Hiroshi Aoki (b. 1976, Yamaguchi Prefecture) has worked since 2010 with a single concept: how memory and time affect objects, and how they appear when visualised. His ceramics are hand-built using multiple types of clay, glazed, fired, and deliberately reworked after firing — exposing underlying areas that carry traces of heat and process permanently embedded in the clay body.

Further works to be announced

Hiroshi Aoki · Japan

Ceramic vessel, 2026

Hand-built, multi-clay, layered glaze, post-firing rework

Approx. 39 × 29 cm

Further works to be announced.

The exhibition space at The mep is anchored by two travertine cubes and a conical stone pedestal — objects from the VV Interior Home collection that serve not as furniture but as sculptural elements in dialogue with the ceramic works placed upon them. Stone holding fired clay. Geological time holding the time of making.

A sofa reupholstered in one-hundred-year-old linen completes the space — a textile that survived a century, carrying in its fibres the time of those who wove it and the spaces it inhabited. In an exhibition about what remains, it is perhaps the most eloquent object of all.

For press and curatorial enquiries:

vvinteriorhome.com/contact

The exhibition is open to the public from 7 November to 2 December 2026 at The mep, Lucerne, Switzerland.

Curator: Valeria Viollaz · VV Interior Home

Venue: The mep · Lucerne, Switzerland

Works from the VV Interior Home Collection

Carol Moreno · Hiroshi Aoki · Pierre Casè · Karl Hügin · Emil Schwarz · Albert Rouillert · Pierre Casè · David Bürkle

Coordination · Viollaz Group

7 November – 2 December 2026

Press & Curatorial Enquiries · vvinteriorhome.com/contact