Jani Leinonen’s Chapel of Remorse at The Dolder Grand

Jani Leinonen’s stained glass installation ’Chapel of Remorse’ has found a new permanent home at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich. 

The Chapel of Remorse was originally installed in a 500-year-old barn in a small village of Madulain, in the valley of Engadin, Switzerland, where the glass panels were cut to fit perfectly in the centuries-old window frames. 

The glass panels of Chapel of Remorse are painted with old stained glass technique at Mayer’sche Hofkunstanstalt in Münich. What is now installed on the Grand Dolder’s wall is not only the stained glass artworks but also the centuries-old chapel-like architectural composition and shapes of the windows of a medieval Swiss barn.

Given the stained-glass technique’s association with religion, Leinonen’s work does convey a sense of divinity. But the work feels no more like a house of god than it does a place of worship to the light, nature or humanity – in all their colourful forms – in good and bad.