ANOMALIA

About

Visual artists Kaija Scheuerman, Ana Bathe, and Manh Hung Nguyen explore trans-human and trans-species themes that, while fantastical, nevertheless reflect contemporary philosophical, speculative, scientific, and ethical thought. The presented works are united in the way they reinterpret archetypical pictorial conceptions of the grotesque, the hybrid, and deviant, giving a positive, inclusive, and empowering new interpretation of classic narratives.

In her photographic work, American visual artist Kaija Scheuerman has been reinterpreting painterly motifs in a new and personal way for some time. Still-life and Vanitas motifs, and more recently, during her time as Artist-in-Residence at SomoS, otherwordly and transhuman tropes have been brought to life in personal, intimate photo sessions, with the artist following her usual process of creating the setting, special effects, sculptured props and costumes herself. Titled "Mutations," Scheuerman's latest series of photographs presented in "Anomalia" explores the area between the grotesque and the beautiful, the human and the other, celebrating a new fascinating and uncanny in-betweenness. Often depersonalizing her subjects, she elevates their depiction from portraits into powerful archetypes that merge the mythical, contemporary and futuristic, all the more engaging because of the highly detailed, technically flawless realistic rendering.

Ana Bathe is a Berlin-based, Belgrade-born artist whose works are inspired by political and social issues, exploring sexual identity and ambiguity, and the role of religion within our society. Consistently using self-made props, prosthetics, and elaborate home environments in her self-portraits, the self-taught artist already thematized otherness and transformation in earlier work, giving a personal and Surrealist interpretation of migration. As a war refugee, she has highlighted how historically, "religion can persuade the perspective on human life, causing fundamental shifts in morality as well as the acceptance or rejection of human behavior often leading to tragedy." Mythical yet political, Bathe's “Portals” formulate a view of bodily transformation and hybridity that transcends gender and species, the past and the future, fantasy and reality, as she envisions the merging point of gender, blurring the lines between masculine and feminine, aiming to spark a dialogue about body politics, censorship, and the role of gender.

Inviting us to look at the body in a magical way, French painter Manh Hung Nguyen portrays it in intimate works that make perplexingly contemporary use of ancient watercolour, pen and ink techniques, one of the most difficult art techniques allowing a direct and spontaneous response to the subject. With a degree in Fashion Design, the self-taught artist works are guided by intuition, as he takes inspiration from personal photos; images sourced from the internet, or nude photos submitted via Instagram. As he comments, “the nude imposed itself. I have always had an attraction for the human body, in its differences, volumes, and wounds.” Nguyen’s gaze shows sexuality as an almost alchemical wonder, portraying the enigmatic mirroring and merging of attraction, and chimeric hybridity that draws as much from in-your-face nude pics as from classical mythology. At the heart of it all lies Nguyen’s favourite theme of the search for the soul mate, according to the myth that Aristophanes evoked in Plato's Banquet; the perpetual quest to find one's other half to become one: man/man, man/woman, woman/woman, and his reinterpretation of man/animal.

As a whole, the presented works invite us to look at the body and the blurring of its boundaries in a fresh, positive and speculative way, taking us on an aesthetically and intellectually rewarding journey in which the fantastical and the corporeal converge.

Entry is free