Lisa Seebach
When I close my eyes in this space it’s as if the space and my body melt together, as if the closing of the eyelids opens up a curtain of images that flow freely between time, impressions and emotions. It’s a space where elements aren’t bound by gravity and where objects aren’t made of real material but simulations, soft around the edges and transformative, as if the black space of the monitor was soft and leaking, as if the clay that holds the wire could slip, like our imagination slips.
Materials melt,
Like our hands melt in the black blanket
the night time leaks black particles like into the air
Filling up streets
Cracks and Corners
Cubic meter by cubic meter
~Elisabeth Molin, 2017
Meliksetian | Briggs is pleased to present Soft Architecture, the first solo exhibition at the gallery with Berlin-based artist Lisa Seebach.
The title of the exhibition, Soft Architecture, relates to the artist’s conception of a “psychological structure” governing the installation – her memories of architectural settings and architectonic forms in the built environment of the city and living spaces combined with heightened psychic tension and mental consciousness, emotions and sensations. This title is indicative of the ambiguities and oppositions that Seebach balances and engages with in her work - rigorous formal structural elements combined with the handmade, the space between the literal and the poetic, or seeming flatness of various elements contrasted with the three dimensional, for instance.
For this exhibition, Seebach has made a site-specific installation consisting of five individual sculptures – three wall-works and two floor pieces - comprised of steel and ceramic components. Seebach’s sculptures are made in relation to the human form and its dynamics – how the body interacts with the sculptural form. Negative space occupies a large part of each sculpture, and, like marks or drawings, the steel elements delineate, outline and contain an invisible space, suspended in an ephemeral, “in-between” state. Each sculpture conjures an amplified moment - elegant and fragile - evoking a space containing something of a thought.
Lisa Seebach (b. 1981, Cologne, Germany) got both her master’s and undergraduate degrees at the Braunschweig University of Art, Braunschweig, Germany. Seebach is the recipient of numerous awards and grants. In 2017, Seebach received the Kunstfonds Bonn Scholarship and she recently completed a residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. She also received the Friedrich-Vordemberge Prize, Cologne, the Gustav Weidanz Award, Halle and the Artist’s Prize of Brandenburg, all in 2016. In 2018 / 19, Seebach’s work will be featured in three solo museum shows at the Kunsthalle Lingen, the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg (Halle/Saale), and the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, respectively. There will be a publication made for each exhibition. Recent solo shows include Turn Gallery, New York, 2017, and the exhibitions Sometimes night comes too quickly at artotek Köln (catalog), 2016, and Dear Fear at the Kunstlerhaus Meinersen (cat.), 2015. Group exhibitions include Back to the Shack at Meliksetian | Briggs curated by André Butzer, 2017, Kunstverein Hannover, 2015, Villa Arson Nice, France, 2015 and the Biennial Mulhouse, Mulhouse, France, 2014. Seebach lives and works in Berlin.
Lisa Seebach's solo exhibtion How stars are just holes in the sky opens Saturday, March 3rd and run through April 8th at the Kunstmuseum Mortizburg, Halle (Saale), Germany.
This month's cover story in Scupture Magazine features the work of Lisa Seebach.
Jonathan Goodman reviews Lisa Seebach's recent exhibition at Turn Gallery, New York in Whitehot Magazine.
André Butzer's Back to the Shack featured in Blouin ARTINFO.
Catherine Wagley reviews André Butzer's curated show Back to the Shack in CARLA.
