Group Show
Untitled Art Miami Beach
6 — 10 Dez 2023
GOLESTANI is pleased to announce the participation at the 12th edition of Untitled Art Miami Beach in the nest sector with works from Sadie Laska and Stefan Rinck.
Opening reception
Wednesday, Dec 6th, 11—7pm
12th Street and Ocean Drive, Miami Beach
booth #A11
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Something sways gently in Sadie Laska's fabric collages: it is the background of the picture itself. With her flags, the artist sets the collage as a genre in motion, transforms it into the three-dimensional without abandoning the medium of the classic tableau entirely—creating the boundaries between painting, collage and plastic seem to blur all the more. In doing so, she uses an abstract visual language that encompasses both the figurative and the purely geometric. Glue on rectangles of fabric Laska's collages on top of one another are painted over or under with color, populated with words and abstract figures. And in between there are always bright accents that even make you think of Pop Art—as well as the inclusion of files and photos of consumer goods.
The fragmentation and disintegration of the motifs of a typical paper collage become scraps of fabric themselves in Laska's works. If the sayings on her collages seem downright anarchistic, their engagement with the image material is also unusual. The artist clearly cites the formal language of Dadaism—in order to break out of it at the same time.
In terms of content, Laska's collages seem to be characterized by a strong examination of social issues, as is it also typical for collages of the 1920s. “No Utopia for You!” runs across one of her collages or “Everything is Just Dirt!” in another. And again and again abstract signs such as crosses and spikes appear, which create a dynamic, convey an atmosphere of action, departure and upheaval. So a roughly outlined golfer meets even more roughly outlined skulls. They are symbols that ask the viewer to question their social environment and their position in society. Other motifs and compositions, on the other hand, appear exaggeratedly idyllic in their bright pastel colors, others almost like a daydream or a psychedelic illusion. This visual and content-related dynamic, the speed and movement, which are traditionally depicted through abstract forms in Futurism and Dada, are not only reflected in Laska's motifs, but also in the material of the picture base itself. The folds of the fabric sheets bulge the wall. The background of the picture casts gentle shadows and seems to breathe—it is no longer static like the classic tableau, but in motion itself.
Sadie Laska (b. 1974 in Prince, West Virginia, United States) is a visual artist and musician based in Queens, New York. She received her MFA in 2014 from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Laska's work has been shown internationally, with solo exhibitions at CANADA, New York; Office Baroque, Brussels; KS Art, New York; and Galerie Ceysson & Bénetière in Paris, Saint Etienne, France; Luxembourg and Geneva. In 2017 she took part in an exhibition organized by Damien Hirst at Newport Street Gallery in London. That same year, Laska curated Animal Farm—a group show at the Brant Foundation and Study Center in Greenwich, CT. In addition, her work has been shown in numerous group shows including Night Gallery in Los Angeles, Gavin Browns Enterprise, White Columns, Marlborough Gallery, James Fuentes Gallery, all in New York; among other. Laska's band I.U.D. performed at venues such as the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, The Kitchen, ISSUE Project Room, Astrup Fearnley and the Kunsthalle Zürich.
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In an obviously unbiased relationship to art history, Stefan Rinck takes up the figurative expressions of phantasms that have become inscribed in collective culture. However, he does not submit to traditional semantic gestures, but rather transforms the topoï through the brute force of stone work. In this way, it can assert its independence or its ability to resist any attempt by the artist to control it. The language of the stone remains solid, including Protestant stubbornness. If Luther had carved rather than spoken, his sculptures would have resembled Rinck's. Rinck's art ventures into adventurous deviations, hollow shapes and extreme asymmetries, as if he had made a pact with the stone to immobilize it for the duration of an experiment. But it seems to chastely puff out its chest and raise the accusatory banner at arm's length: "It is because of you that I have withered away!" What an accusation that is hurled at the artists from every block of stone! Even Michelangelo does not capture the whole potential that lies dormant in the raw stone. Despite everything, Rinck succeeds in the feat of making the sculpture visibly proud, in order to counteract the lifelessness of its own material with a properly erect limb. Eros and Thanatos is a masterpiece of sculptural design. The power of form awakens the dead stone to life.
Since the fables of La Fontaine and the studies of physiognomy by Gaspard Lavater (1741–1801), we have been accustomed to expanding the line through caricature, seeing meaning in deformation, order in chaos, and form in informality. Monkey characters are particularly popular in cartoons because the basis of gestures, facial expressions and other means of expression is empathy, a feeling parallel to imitation. The monkey is the symbolic animal of painters, as they are said to be able to imitate nature, just as monkeys are said to imitate humans. In the 1990s, Jörg Immendorff created a group of bronze monkeys that allow the viewer to empathize with the animals. Everyone knows that dog owners end up looking like their pet. With the panorama of chimpanzees' cultural gestures proposed by Immendorff (they point to indicate, read to teach, offer to threaten, confess banalities to say nothing...), we accomplish the "Know thyself" of the ancient wisdom.
Stefan Rinck expands this idea of posterity through prehistory, the specification of humans through their animal origins, with the necessary sarcasm and the radical thought of those stranded in evolution: humans. This can very well be understood as a vision of death—death as the end of a claim to a higher level of evolution. Confessing banalities, in order to say nothing, we accomplish the "Know thyself" of the old wisdom: we recognize ourselves better in animals than in our fellow human beings. — Bazon Brock
Stefan Rinck (b, 1973 in Homburg/Saar, Germany) studied art history and philosophy at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken and sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe, and lives and works in Berlin. He has had several gallery and museum exhibitions including Museum de Hallen, Harlem (NL), Sorry We're Closed, Brussels (BE), Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles and New York City (US), Vilma Gold, London (UK), Semiose, Paris (FR), Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (DE), The Breeder, Athens (GR), Galeria Alegria, Madrid/Barcelona (ES) and Cruise&Callas, Berlin (DE). He participated in the Busan Biennale in South Korea and the Vent des Fôret and La Forêt d’Art Contemporain in France, where he created permanent public sculptures. In 2018, the work The Mangooses of Beauvais was permanently installed in the city of Paris at 53-57 rue de Grenelle (Beaupassage). The sandstone sculpture »Why I Carry / Large Load Bear« was inaugurated in November 2021 on Zionskirchplatz in Berlin-Mitte. It is in the following public collections: CBK Rotterdam (NL), Musée de la Loterie (BE), Krohne Collection (DE), FRAC Corse (FR). In 2019, Stefan Rinck was featured in the Thames & Hudson publication 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow. The documentary »Heart of Stone« by Sonja Baeger premiered in Berlin in 2021 and shows the production process of three monumental sculptures of Stefan Rinck.