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exhibition text |
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Helmut Lang creates enigmatic sculptures through skillful mutations of form, volume, light and the material history of objects. His pieces explore and explode the fertile space between abstraction and figuration. Lang has stated he prefers materials "with a past, elements with irreplaceable presence and with scars and memories of a former purpose." Lang's work is process-oriented, and the residue of his experimentation is left visible in the final product. The objects he creates have an intense physicality that evokes the human body and human condition while remaining essentially abstract.
Helmut Lang's sculpture, untitled (twenty two), simultaneously evokes the spinal column and the segmented body of the annelid (earthworm); while referencing the scale of the human body (like many of Lang's works). It invites the viewer to consider the body less as a hierarchy of limbs and organs, but as a meshwork of equivalent and interchangeable elements.
untitled (twenty two) could resemble a tribe, a gathering or a pagan grouping of fykes. Examined closely, the kinetic work becomes distinctly biomorphic changing infinitely depending on the variables of the surroundings.
Lang lives and works in New York and Long Island. He has exhibited since 1996 in Europe and the United States, among others, at the Florence Biennale, Florence (1996); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (1998); The Journal Gallery, New York (2007); kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2008); The Fireplace Project, Long Island (2011); Schusev State Museum, Moscow (2011); Mark Fletcher, New York (2012); Deste Foundation, Athens (2013); Sperone Westwater, New York (2015); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2016), Sperone Westwater, New York (2017); Sammlung Friedrichshof, Burgenland (2017); and Stadtraum, Vienna (2017). |
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