Crystal Space
Crystal Space, Lullin + Ferrari, Zürich, Switzerland, 23 April to 4 June 2016
We are very pleased to show sculptures and gouaches by Isa Melsheimer in her first exhibition in our gallery. The title crystal space points to the direction of the works on display: Architectural space and crystalline form are two pivotal subjects in
the work of Isa Melsheimer. Her art is not unknown in Switzerland. In 2010 she had an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Langenthal with the title Mittelland and in 2007 she showed works at the Galerie Mark Müller in Zurich.
For all of her shows Isa Melsheimer considers in depth the architectual settings of the exhibition space. In the exhibition crystal space six sculptures occupy the first room, which through its large shopping window connects strongly with the street and has the most daylight in the gallery. The sculptures benefit from the prevailing sidelight. The title of the two groups of works, containing each three sculptures, is: We are Concrete – We are Bodies – We have Sex – We are Neoretroactive – We are Relative. The sculptures seem, like a choir in a Greek play, to proclaim these words. The title is
borrowed from the poem Mirrors of New York by Benjamin De Casseres, quoted by Rem Koolhaas in his book Delirious New York (1978). The title refers to the production of the sculptures and their materiality, gives clues to their appearance as well as to their dependency and comments on their activity. The title breathes life into the sculptures and gives them an animistic presence. The sculptures made of concrete and fibrious grit refer in their materiality and form to concret buildings from the 1960s and 70s, a period often related to the architectural style of Brutalism. Specially in their form they also
relate to architecture of the 1980s from the postmodern periode. In their size and form the sculptures feature a modell-like quality and at the same time they can also be considered just as flower buckets, which can be placed outside. In the exhibition there are therefore equiped in one of the triplet with water plants, and in the other group of three with mimosa, fern and foxtail lily. On the wall hang two gouaches showing the cemetery Brion conceived by the architect Carlo Scarpa in the early 1970s.
In the second room of the gallery Isa Melsheimer displays again gouaches and three sculptures. In her gouaches of well-known architectural sites Isa Melsheimer creates small autonomous worlds. Often these drawings are based on black and white source material showing the buildings in their original condition, that is, without signs of subsequent decay or dilapidation and without later archtiectural or landscaping additions. Therefore these works hold, despite their character as images, comparable to the sculptures, a modell-like quality. For her show in our gallery Isa Melsheimer has specially created eight gouaches. Amongst them in six works Isa depicts buildings in Zurich: Two buildings by Justus Dahinden, the Trigon Village from 1969 and the Ferrohouse from 1970, the office building Haus zur Palme by Haefeli Moser Steiger and André M. Studer from 1964 and private house by Hans Demarmels from 1963-65. Next to these detailed gouaches Isa Melsheimer places an ensemble of sculptures called Raumgruppe, whose enclosed form corresponds to the exhibition space. Two sculptures made out of glass complete the group of works in this room. They are called Studio 4 and Studio 9, and were created during a residency by Isa Melsheimer in Rom. They represent two of the seven hills of the Eternal City, Caelius and Aventin. In the office space is positioned a modell-like hexagonal concrete sculptures of a building in Berlin by the English postmodern architect James Sterling, next to it lays a column – a common postmodern allusion to antiquity.
Isa Melsheimer combines in astonishing ways several group of works in different techniques by creating convincing dialogs between them.