ENCLOSURES

Galerie 21 im Künstlerhaus Vorwerk-Stift, Vorwerkstrasse 21, 20357 Hamburg

July 1 to 4, 2021

Opening reception: July 1, 2021, 4-9pm

Gallery hours: July 2 to 4, 2021, 12-5pm

The binational exhibition Enclosures presents recent work by six artists living in Germany and the United States: Sarah Arriagada, Annie Brito Hodgin, Katarina Obradovic, Bonnie Paisley, Olivia von Pock, and Dagmar Rauwald.

Reflecting on the profound societal and personal shifts following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibited paintings, sculptures, videos, and animations engage with experiences of isolation, vulnerability, adaptation, and survival as filtered through the artists’ embodied perspectives.

The exhibition title, Enclosures, alludes to the protective yet restrictive—at times claustrophobic—structures that emerged during this period in order to sustain both daily life and artistic practice: homes, masks, and social distancing on the physical level; personal boundaries, routines, and discipline on the psychological.

At the same time, Enclosures points to the gendered barriers embedded within contemporary society—including the so-called “glass ceiling”—that became increasingly visible under the pressures of the pandemic. Many women were pushed out of the workforce in order to care for children and manage domestic responsibilities, while others faced prolonged isolation, disrupted routines, and the absence of physical closeness and social connection. Across these differing conditions, strategies for emotional endurance and resilience became essential.

Bringing together mothers and non-mothers alike, the exhibition reflects on the relationship between the private and the political, questions who or what governs the body and everyday life, and examines self-care within an unequal social landscape. Through humor, precision, and emotional acuity, the artists respond to crisis not through retreat, but through an insistence on life in all its complexity.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sarah Arriagada's work explores the mental and physical space where closeness and intimacy touch on questions of boundaries and self-preservation. She applies and partially subtracts layers of oil paint onto small scale wood panels, bringing together softened, abstract and figurative elements into richly textured, kinetic compositions. Her bold brushwork and serene color compositions allude to intimate scenes of the domestic realm, depicting curtained windows, rounded vessels and the female body living in the shallow room of the paintings' physical edges and corners. Sarah Arriagada lives and works in Columbia, Missouri. saraharriagada.com

Annie Brito Hodgin's work is a figurative exploration of trauma, isolation, and absurdity; the ways we synthesize those realities, and the ways they shape us for better or worse. Lone female figures inhabit colorful, often-tense, otherworldly scenes. But if the figures are suffering, or fearful, or lonely, it's usually with a placidity that belies an incontrovertible will to survive, whatever the toll. Life and death, loveliness and decay, tenderness and brutal indifference coincide. Whether and how they reconcile is perhaps what her figures are working to discover. Annie Brito Hodgin works and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. anniebritohodgin.com

Katarina Obradovic engages in a diligent and slow process of performance, photography and video work, combining the individual steps and materials into a digital flow of black and white images on screen. Her videos investigate personal boundaries and possibilities that lie in her relationship to the spaces within and outside of herself. The visual remains of this tedious procedure are achingly beautiful and endlessly captivating – a human figure moving in a white cube and within the constraints of a porous and malleable, self-built structure. Its shape and motions are comparable to that of the fine and bold movements of black calligraphy ink streaming onto white paper. Katarina Obradovic lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

Bonnie Paisley uses a diversity of found objects from the domestic realm, combined with traditional art supplies and building materials in order to create a wide array of visual experiences ranging from paintings to assemblages, stop motion videos to installations. She approaches her studio work much like a chef in the kitchen, blending, mixing, tossing, rearranging, and finally serving her tasteful and voluptuous creations. Through her process and work, she seeks to crystallize personal memories and common experiences as evidence of our human existence in an ephemeral life and on a precariously changing planet. Bonnie Paisley lives and works in Portland, Oregon. bonniepaisley.com

Olivia von Pock creates casts of her feet that she moulds in soap, defying the loss of structure she first encountered during lockdown. The process of making these objects is helping her stay down-to-earth and feel her own body grounded in the reality of the present moment. The ephemeral quality of the soap alludes to the fragility of our body, while the steadiness of its form reminds us of its resourcefulness. By using a material that gained sudden preciousness during the pandemic, Olivia von Pock generously gifts us with a healthy sense of self-worth. Olivia von Pock lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. oliviavonpock.de

Dagmar Rauwald's arrangements of canvases, sketches and foil paintings, which partially overlap, open up a space of reflection on how to interpret and relate to the manifold contradictions of the current situation. While she has been working with transparent foil as a painting surface since the 1990s, the material has recently gained new meaning through the use of protective films in public spaces to reduce the risk of virus spread and infection. The uncertainty that Dagmar Rauwald embraces in the making of her work, her joy of experimentation and risk-taking, and her responsiveness to accidents and emergencies bring to light surprising parallels between her process and the development of and responses to the pandemic. Dagmar Rauwald lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. dagmarrauwald.de