Galerie Friese
Galerie Friese

VOLVER
Claire de Santa Coloma

September 16 – October 28, 2023

For Art Week 2023, Galerie Friese unveils the second solo exhibition of Argentinian sculptor Claire de Santa Coloma (b. 1983). The title VOLVER (RETURN), a reference to the iconic tango song by Carlos Gardel, reveals the origins of the exhibition: after more than twenty years abroad, most recently in Lisbon and Sydney, the artist has recently returned to her native Argentina, where she created this first exhibition in her newly set-up studio in Buenos Aires.

Made from found wood or wood that was brought to her, Claire de Santa Coloma’s works interrogate the central themes of sculpture as well as the creative methods that form its foundations. She specifically alludes to the vocabulary of twentieth-century abstract sculpture as a kind of archetype of the genre. Her latest works display a figurativeness that is new for the artist; they are reminiscent of bodies, cult and fetish objects, or suggest—following an inverse logic—a “negative space” for the body. Wandering around the sculptures, set in dialogue by Santa Coloma in situ, evokes a sense of the familiar—a sensual, physical act of remembering that simultaneously connects us to human history and its close relationship with wood as a material.

Santa Coloma’s new, monumental wall installation of cut-outs, a group of works made of paper created in parallel to the wooden sculptures, also addresses this aspect of disappearance and remembrance. Forty sheets of paper with delicate cuts made by hand with scalpels trace a full-sized rectangle as it disappears into a line and then into nothingness: an homage to Sol LeWitt’s 1994 work Vanish as well as the first multi-part installation in the cut-out medium, which the artist has virtually invented herself.

Coinciding with the exhibition, the book CLAIRE DE SANTA COLOMA: WORKS is published, which offers a comprehensive insight into her oeuvre from 2013 to 2022 and can be purchased at the gallery.

Parallel to this, the exhibition "MALEREI" with works by the artist Anna Leonhardt will be shown in the first two rooms of the gallery. 

WORKS

VOLVER
Claire de Santa Coloma

September 16 – October 28, 2023

For Art Week 2023, Galerie Friese unveils the second solo exhibition of Argentinian sculptor Claire de Santa Coloma (b. 1983). The title VOLVER (RETURN), a reference to the iconic tango song by Carlos Gardel, reveals the origins of the exhibition: after more than twenty years abroad, most recently in Lisbon and Sydney, the artist has recently returned to her native Argentina, where she created this first exhibition in her newly set-up studio in Buenos Aires.

Made from found wood or wood that was brought to her, Claire de Santa Coloma’s works interrogate the central themes of sculpture as well as the creative methods that form its foundations. She specifically alludes to the vocabulary of twentieth-century abstract sculpture as a kind of archetype of the genre. Her latest works display a figurativeness that is new for the artist; they are reminiscent of bodies, cult and fetish objects, or suggest—following an inverse logic—a “negative space” for the body. Wandering around the sculptures, set in dialogue by Santa Coloma in situ, evokes a sense of the familiar—a sensual, physical act of remembering that simultaneously connects us to human history and its close relationship with wood as a material.

Santa Coloma’s new, monumental wall installation of cut-outs, a group of works made of paper created in parallel to the wooden sculptures, also addresses this aspect of disappearance and remembrance. Forty sheets of paper with delicate cuts made by hand with scalpels trace a full-sized rectangle as it disappears into a line and then into nothingness: an homage to Sol LeWitt’s 1994 work Vanish as well as the first multi-part installation in the cut-out medium, which the artist has virtually invented herself.

Coinciding with the exhibition, the book CLAIRE DE SANTA COLOMA: WORKS is published, which offers a comprehensive insight into her oeuvre from 2013 to 2022 and can be purchased at the gallery.

Parallel to this, the exhibition "MALEREI" with works by the artist Anna Leonhardt will be shown in the first two rooms of the gallery. 

WORKS