Lee Scratch Perry

Cabaret Voltaire is delighted to present the first institutional solo exhibition in Switzerland and Europe by Lee Scratch Perry. Perry shaped the development of reggae, ska and dub like no other. His studios in Kingston and Einsiedeln were legendary. However, Perry's Gesamtkunstwerk also included costumes, totemic sculptures and assemblages of language, film, painting and everyday objects such as CDs, mirrors, stones, religious and pop-cultural images. Perry is connected to the Dada legacy of Cabaret Voltaire not only with cross-disciplinary work, sampling culture and the DIY approach; both playfully broke with social norms, created their own mythologies and were committed to the process and collaborations. In Switzerland, Perry and the Dada group found a quiet island that allowed for both concentration and creative expansion. The incubators for these artists were spaces that are known worldwide: a beer and wine bar in Zurich, a garage as the Blue Ark Studio in the canton of Schwyz.

The exhibition focuses on Perry's artistic work in Switzerland since the 1990s, including studio walls from the Blue Ark Studio, sculptural assemblages, paintings, decorated equipment and edited material from his extensive video archive. Works and video pieces, some secured and restored for the first time for the exhibition, provide a profound insight into Lee Scratch Perry's cosmos. They bring his unique character and the shaping of his environment to life, highlighting the complex relationships and influences between music, spirituality and art. The public will be able to enter a time capsule in the Cabaret Voltaire, which will allow access to the thirty-year creative phase in Switzerland for the first time. The exhibition will also include works that have emerged from collaborations and make the archive comprehensible as a living network.

Lee Scratch Perry (1936-2021) was born in a remote Jamaican village in 1936 and moved to Kingston in 1961 to pursue a career in music after a divine voice led him there. After founding the infamous Black Ark Studio, he produced some of Bob Marley's most famous songs and became one of the pioneering forces in the development of dub and reggae music. A few years later, the studio burned down. Perry then led a nomadic life until he settled in Switzerland. Perry worked with artists such as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, the Beastie Boys, The Clash and many others and was awarded a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2003. In the late 1970s, Perry began painting symbols and dub collages in his studio, which gradually evolved into a multidisciplinary Gesamtkunstwerk practice encompassing his entire body and physical environment. Often imbued with spirituality, Perry's visual work increasingly took the form of multi-layered clusters that constantly shift and change. Using paint, mirrors, stones, photographs, videos, poems and word collages, Perry created an ever-expanding network of paradisiacal animals, cartoon characters and saints – in a ceaseless quest to worship the Almighty. In recent years, Perry's work has been increasingly recognised in the art field and exhibited in group exhibitions at the NMAAHC / Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC (2023), the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf (2023), the MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (2022) and the 34th Sao Paulo Biennial (2021), among others.