After exploring the broader themes of Vera Palme’s Diversion series in Part One, this final blog post zooms in on a single, striking work.
Tucked within Vera Palme’s “Diversion” series is a peculiar diptych that carries a trace of pop-cultural memory: “I want to believe”. It’s a phrase burned into the minds of many who grew up in the 1990s – a slogan hovering beneath a pixelated UFO in The X-Files, Mulder’s melancholic poster of faith in the unprovable. Here, Palme reanimates this iconic image not once, but twice.
The first version is a painted replica of the poster itself – stylized, but recognizable. The second distills the image into a monochromatic abstraction, the phrase “I want to believe” now floating in a fog of greys. The shift between the two reveals much of Palme’s process and conceptual orbit: the collapse of reference into abstraction, of symbol into gesture, of faith into a smudge.
But what exactly are we being asked to believe in?
Is it aliens, as the original poster suggests? The emotional investment in a TV character’s longing? The ability of painting to still carry cultural memory? Or are we simply facing the absurd recursion of a painting of a poster of a fictional object?
Palme’s double-image performs a slippage – from nostalgic recognition to painterly ambiguity. And in that gap, something strange happens. The phrase “I want to believe” becomes detached from its original referent and starts to loop back onto the medium itself. It becomes less about extraterrestrials and more about our own fragile desire to believe in art, in narrative, in meaning. Palme doesn’t offer clarity. She presents layers – emotional, cultural, material – and lets them hover unresolved.
There’s also a soft irony at play. To believe in the painting is to knowingly suspend disbelief, just as one does with science fiction. Palme’s approach acknowledges the mechanics of fiction and lets them remain visible. The artwork doesn’t close the circuit of meaning; it opens it further. The promise of revelation is always deferred.
In “I want to believe”, the painterly surface becomes both a memorial and a mirror. It asks us not just what we’re looking at, but why we keep looking. Why we need to believe. Why we return to fragments and fictions for comfort – and how painting can hold that contradiction without resolving it.
This piece, more than any other in the exhibition, crystallizes the stakes of Palme’s practice: the yearning for truth in an image that resists truth, the emotional residue left behind by media, and the exhausted but persistent hope that painting – despite everything – might still matter.
🖼️✨ more about Vera Palme: https://kunsthallewinterthur.ch/aktuelle-ausstellung Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabelbergant/
Read more on my previous Blogposts:
Post 1: Women in Art: A Journey Through Milan’s Galleries and Museums https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/03/10/women-in-art-a-journey-through-milans-galleries-and-museums-isaberg98/
Post 2: Crash of Colors at KKL Lucerne https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/03/15/crash-of-colors-at-kkl-lucerne-christine-streuli-isaberg98/
Post 3: Lucerne: Roma Stories with Needle and Thread (Video included) https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/03/25/lucerne-roma-stories-with-needle-and-thread-video-included-isaberg98/
Post 4: Who owns the stars? https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/04/21/who-owns-the-stars-isaberg98/
Post 5: Aperol & Art: Alba’s Playful Vernissage in Basel (Reel included) https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/05/05/aperol-art-albas-playful-vernissage-in-basel-reel-included-isaberg98/
Post 6: Stolen Negatives, Erased Credit – The story of Lucia Moholy https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/05/17/stolen-negatives-erased-credit-the-story-of-lucia-moholy-isaberg98/
Post 7: Part 1: Vera Palme at Kunsthalle Winterthur – Disorientation as Strategy https://blog.hslu.ch/majorobm/2025/05/26/part-1-vera-palme-at-kunsthalle-winterthur-disorientation-as-strategy-isaberg98/
It’s interesting to think about how ‘I want to believe’ shifts from being about aliens or Mulder’s longing into something more introspective. Maybe the question isn’t about what we *believe* in, but what it means to put faith into something intangible—whether that’s art or the idea of something beyond our understanding.
Such an interesting angle! It really reframes the phrase as less about what we believe in and more about why we feel the need to believe at all—especially in things we can’t fully grasp, like art, mystery, or even hope itself.:)
Thank you for this very inspiring blog series. It was very beautiful.
Thank you so much for reading and for your kind words! I’m really glad the series resonated with you — it means a lot 🌏✨
A cool statement sentence of art ” I want to believe”
Right? It’s simple but loaded with meaning — feels both hopeful and skeptical at the same time. Such a powerful statement to build a piece around.
Love that she took such a recognizable reference and made it completely her own. You describe her process so clearly, it really brings out how layered the work is!
Thank you! Yes, it’s amazing how she transforms something so familiar into something deeply personal and new. 🙂