Cassina Projects and ARTUNER are currently holding “Figure of Speech,” a new exhibition on view through January 14 that is the second chapter of a joint exhibition program between the gallery and the curated online platform. The show features new works by David Czupryn, Georg Herold and Katja Seib.
This exhibition looks at the practices of the three contemporary German artists affiliated with the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Specifically, it explores the ways in which each of them articulates the characters within the different narratives weaved into their works. Indeed, Czupryn, Herold, and Seib evoke, through the protagonists of their paintings, a plethora of references and affects.
The title of the show, understood as a rhetorical device (simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, allegory…) that enriches text with complex layers of significance through omission of words, repetition, or any departure from the words’ literal meaning, has been chosen as a way to describe the three artists’ respective approach to their art. Their practices employ mediums that are often unexpected or displaced from their original context, subverting usual associations. Their use of material, such as that of a figure of speech, often refines denotation by means of bringing sentiments closer to the everyday, or conversely by elevating simple experiences.
Not interested in a faithful reproduction of nature as such, Czupryn’s investigations of the natural and artificial merge with uncannily human emotions in his works on canvas. Personal episodes and dark stories take the shape of disquieting anthropomorphic assemblages of plants and plastics, polymers and minerals.
Herold is presenting both his monumental humanoid bronze sculptures and the signature caviar paintings he makes by arranging and numbering thousands of the precious black eggs on canvas. The caviar paintings are an investigation into displaced materials, into luxury and mortality, created with a substance that is simultaneously precious and degradable. The sculptures, on the other hand, embody the struggle between the maker and his creation, between desire and wish-fulfillment.
Often metaphorical, Seib’s mysterious paintings articulate ineffable feelings that are at once personal and universal. The narratives she represents reflect with self-irony on the human condition in its infinite declinations. This body of work looks at current events through her portrayal of friends and people she feels close to, bringing such occurrences closer to an intimate dimension. Some, like the death of the legendary musician Prince, are moments that blur the boundaries between public and private, as they touch us deeply, without concerning us directly.