Mario Sala
29 Aug - 22 Oct 2006
Mario Sala
Desert with a salesman
Opening: 26 August 2006 11 am-6pm
Exhibition: 29 August - 22 Oct. 2006
Galerie Nicola von Senger is pleased to present Mario Sala’s exhibition Wüste mit Händler (Desert With a Salesman). After his transformations of the exhibition spaces at Helmhaus Zurich (Das Gebäude), at Parasol unit in London (The Building), and at Galerie Friedrich in Basel (Die Wohnung), Mario Sala decided to make a desert of Galerie Nicola von Senger in a most positive sense.
While the desert is not visually reproduced, it finds its way into Sala’s works in stylistic elements. There are few pieces relating directly to the exhibition’s title. An assembly of stone objects portrays a sun, two cacti, and a salesman. Sheets of color transparency film turn a display window into a gleaming sun, and an expressive yet bare drawing shows the concept of the desertification as it spreads across the gallery. This is where it becomes clear that the salesman is not only represented in a sandstone figure but also in the gallerist. The works, which at first glance appear not to fit the desert theme, are already properly tied into the concept as the salesman’s wares.
Sala’s work has a dynamic and polyphony that stems from fragmented narrative elements and complex, layered image compositions. Transformation, ambiguity, and hermeneutic destabilization are trademarks of the artist, which can be found in all of his works. They are embodied in his nomadic, pleomorphic figure of the drifter. In this desert, the drifter is reincarnated as a weather beaten tumbler toy. His gaze is fixed upon a column that seems to dissolve toward heaven. His quasi-religious pose activates the connotation of the desert as a place of prophetic revelation.
Six works that are alternately titled “Heaven” and “Hell” point away from the mundane. By applying glue, oil paint, and watercolor over found and self-made photographs, Sala gives them an almost hallucinatory quality. Thus we find an angel’s trumpet aiming at a red star in the Chinese parliament. The star is at the center of a halo, which hovers over the head of a stone statue depicting a woman. She seems to be sitting at a computer as though she had been immortalized as a secretary in a proletarian beyond. Images of the swearing-in of Viktor Yushchenko, of the Second Vatican Council, of country singer Kitty Wells, an oil-tank, and a car encounter similar contextual shifts. Stories are taken up, abandoned, and resumed. Everywhere we find entanglements of secular and religious motives, of reality and fantasy. The closer we come to an explanation, the more likely it will dissolve into thin air like an oasis before a man dying with thirst, and the more intense becomes our desire to have another go at it.
Gregor Staiger, July 2006
For further information and images please contact the gallery at:
info@nicolavonsenger.com
The artist would like to thank the sculptor’s studio Urs Traber, Steckborn.
Desert with a salesman
Opening: 26 August 2006 11 am-6pm
Exhibition: 29 August - 22 Oct. 2006
Galerie Nicola von Senger is pleased to present Mario Sala’s exhibition Wüste mit Händler (Desert With a Salesman). After his transformations of the exhibition spaces at Helmhaus Zurich (Das Gebäude), at Parasol unit in London (The Building), and at Galerie Friedrich in Basel (Die Wohnung), Mario Sala decided to make a desert of Galerie Nicola von Senger in a most positive sense.
While the desert is not visually reproduced, it finds its way into Sala’s works in stylistic elements. There are few pieces relating directly to the exhibition’s title. An assembly of stone objects portrays a sun, two cacti, and a salesman. Sheets of color transparency film turn a display window into a gleaming sun, and an expressive yet bare drawing shows the concept of the desertification as it spreads across the gallery. This is where it becomes clear that the salesman is not only represented in a sandstone figure but also in the gallerist. The works, which at first glance appear not to fit the desert theme, are already properly tied into the concept as the salesman’s wares.
Sala’s work has a dynamic and polyphony that stems from fragmented narrative elements and complex, layered image compositions. Transformation, ambiguity, and hermeneutic destabilization are trademarks of the artist, which can be found in all of his works. They are embodied in his nomadic, pleomorphic figure of the drifter. In this desert, the drifter is reincarnated as a weather beaten tumbler toy. His gaze is fixed upon a column that seems to dissolve toward heaven. His quasi-religious pose activates the connotation of the desert as a place of prophetic revelation.
Six works that are alternately titled “Heaven” and “Hell” point away from the mundane. By applying glue, oil paint, and watercolor over found and self-made photographs, Sala gives them an almost hallucinatory quality. Thus we find an angel’s trumpet aiming at a red star in the Chinese parliament. The star is at the center of a halo, which hovers over the head of a stone statue depicting a woman. She seems to be sitting at a computer as though she had been immortalized as a secretary in a proletarian beyond. Images of the swearing-in of Viktor Yushchenko, of the Second Vatican Council, of country singer Kitty Wells, an oil-tank, and a car encounter similar contextual shifts. Stories are taken up, abandoned, and resumed. Everywhere we find entanglements of secular and religious motives, of reality and fantasy. The closer we come to an explanation, the more likely it will dissolve into thin air like an oasis before a man dying with thirst, and the more intense becomes our desire to have another go at it.
Gregor Staiger, July 2006
For further information and images please contact the gallery at:
info@nicolavonsenger.com
The artist would like to thank the sculptor’s studio Urs Traber, Steckborn.