About
Exhibition opening: Friday, 19. September 2014, 18:00-21:00
Duration of Exhibition: until 8 November 2014
Berlin Artweek 2014: open from September 19th
The drawings and sculptures of Nina Lola Bachhuber illustrate a feel for materials and detailed shapes as well as their aesthetic use. Below this formally highly precise layer, however, there are surreal, dream-like echoes which evoke psychological states as elaborate materializations of surprising liveliness. From September 19th to November 8th, the works of artist Nina Lola Bachhuber, who lives in New York, are on show at the Heinz-Martin Weigand Gallery.
Nina Lola Bachhuber's work comprises sculptural installations and drawings. The subject of both groups of works is the body human or animal, fragmented or reworked, at times as an absent existence. What always arises are situations ranging from humorous to surreal with extraordinarily vibrant protagonists. The sculptural assemblage Bankett (2013) forms the centre of the exhibition and also gives it its name. A crimson cloth, hemmed with black hair, placed upon it are skeletons of wooden parasols as well as bird feathers and springs. An intriguing presentation, which offers associations with a banquet which with ceremonious intentions, potentially even the obsessive ones of a cult was set up by the absent followers of a not-necessarily archaic fetishist culture.
Protagonists emerge in the monochromatic drawings, mostly rendered in red ink. Inside, executed in a formally meticulous fashion, the line guides the creation of the figures. These in turn tease the boundary between abstraction and figuration, create surreal phantasms and transformations between man and animal. Thanks to their rather small format the drawings appear intimate and become even more so when the viewer draws closer to them: Immediately the figures endowed with unmistakably feminine, often erotic traits become discernible and enter into direct contact with the viewer. With their absurd bodies they seem to be engaged in an ecstatic dance and they appear to want the observer to come and join them in this wild round dance. With their closeness to dream sequences or figures from archaic cultures the mysterious nature of these bodies opens up an independent, feisty and living cosmology and invigorates the feast of phantasms.
Nina Lola Bachhuber was born in Munich and studied at University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. She lives in New York.
Bachhuber's works have been exhibited internationally, among others at UCLA Hammer Museum, The Drawing Center, P.S.1/MoMA, Sculpture Center, Metro Pictures, Mary Boone and Lehmann Maupin Galleries, Dieu Donné in New York, The Moore Space, Miami; Gallery Min Min, Tokyo; Glasgow Sculpture Studios; The Museum of Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv; The 7th Mercosul Biennal in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Her works form part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.