GEST
December 15, 2020–January 31, 2021
NEL AERTS, MARISA ADESMAN, STEPHANIE TEMMA HIER,
BLAIR SAXON-HILL, BONY RAMIREZ, CONRAD RUIZ, SOYEON SHIN,
MATTHEW SWEESY, ORKIDEH TORABI, AND MATTHIAS VRIENS
Reflecting on what has to be one of the strangest years in many, the group show we are opening on Tuesday (sadly to no physical audience, once again) is a personal show that came together during the lockdown. While constantly browsing the web in a meditative and almost obsessive way on my phone, certain works popped up through a little searching, or through group shows here and there, and stuck with me. Some of the artists I have hosted at our residency program in Cologne, some I represent, and some were completely new to me.
I wrote them down and collected those images that instinctually and immediately spoke to me and created a folder to keep them. This started in March and it hasn’t ended.
When planning the final show for the year, I went back to this folder and list and started considering how the works related to one another, or if they related at all, and what it was about them that made me take notice and collect the imagery in the first place. I came to see that the thread that tied together so many of these works is that they have a very narrative quality; one that feels very personal. In fact, they feel semi-obsessive and as if they also could have been made at a time of confinement. There is a sense of angst but also a sense of humor and melancholy present in the works and, while there were many more artists that could have been part of the show, per se, I chose the following group to be in GEST because they made the most sense together. I am neither a scholar nor a linguist by any means, but searching for a title led me through a thesaurus web that started with the search: storytelling.
GEST, which means a tale of adventures, really struck a chord with me, because all the works had a sense of that definition, to me.The artists on view are Nel Aerts, Marisa Adesman, Stephanie Temma Hier, Blair Saxon-Hill, Bony Ramirez, Conrad Ruiz, Soyeon Shin, Matthew Sweesy, Orkideh Torabi, and Matthias Vriens. I am grateful to all the artists for working very hard to have work in the show and for being part of this adventure.
I hope you enjoy this exhibition and now you all know a new word, too.
Nino Mier