Sonia Leimer
Junks of Joy
01 May - 12 Jun 2021
Sonia Leimer, Junks of Joy, exhibition view KOW 2021, as part of KOW Joint Ventures: Galerie Nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, foto: Ladislav Zajac
Sonia Leimer’s exhibition „Junks of Joy“ intertwines several strands in the artist’s output of the past few years. Leimer’s art grapples with forms of globalization, the exploration of new places, and the relevance of these movements, sketching their impact on the world.
In the key scene in the classic 1980s movie “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko, the personification of rampant neoliberalism, tries to explain the world to a delegation of union representatives. Gekko’s credo that “greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit” sums up a growth-positive way of thinking that has shaped our lives for generations. At its core, it contains a second important component—hope. The hope of advancement, the hope of setting off for distant shores, but by extension also the expectation that technology will compensate for our destructive way of life: the perennial hope that we will somehow fix the whole mess.
The video “Eden Antarctica” homes in on this observation. We are transported to a research station in the icy wastes of Antarctica, where scientists are investigating novel forms of food production—a tacit admission of defeat: instead of trying to resolve a global challenge, humanity invests its hopes in scientifically and geographically remote panaceas. The need for less exploitative uses of the planet and its resources is obscured by the futuristic belief that a broken planet can be made livable again by an enormous feat of engineering.
The ensemble of “Penny Bank” sculptures consists of a series of ceramics whose amorphous shapes suggest little critters insatiably gobbling up cash through their narrow slots. The surfaces are enhanced by a fat lava glaze that recalls the surface of the moon. It is a style that was popularized by design objects in the 1960s—their futurism emblematized the naïve optimism that fueled the exploration of new worlds. Leimer brands that confidence as wishful thinking with her series of “Space Junks.” They were inspired by debris from old satellites and the space capsules of yesteryear’s expeditions into the great unknown that fell back to Earth as useless lumps of material, relics of our lack of awareness concerning the consequences of our way of life. Hope and willful blindness go hand in hand.
In the key scene in the classic 1980s movie “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko, the personification of rampant neoliberalism, tries to explain the world to a delegation of union representatives. Gekko’s credo that “greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit” sums up a growth-positive way of thinking that has shaped our lives for generations. At its core, it contains a second important component—hope. The hope of advancement, the hope of setting off for distant shores, but by extension also the expectation that technology will compensate for our destructive way of life: the perennial hope that we will somehow fix the whole mess.
The video “Eden Antarctica” homes in on this observation. We are transported to a research station in the icy wastes of Antarctica, where scientists are investigating novel forms of food production—a tacit admission of defeat: instead of trying to resolve a global challenge, humanity invests its hopes in scientifically and geographically remote panaceas. The need for less exploitative uses of the planet and its resources is obscured by the futuristic belief that a broken planet can be made livable again by an enormous feat of engineering.
The ensemble of “Penny Bank” sculptures consists of a series of ceramics whose amorphous shapes suggest little critters insatiably gobbling up cash through their narrow slots. The surfaces are enhanced by a fat lava glaze that recalls the surface of the moon. It is a style that was popularized by design objects in the 1960s—their futurism emblematized the naïve optimism that fueled the exploration of new worlds. Leimer brands that confidence as wishful thinking with her series of “Space Junks.” They were inspired by debris from old satellites and the space capsules of yesteryear’s expeditions into the great unknown that fell back to Earth as useless lumps of material, relics of our lack of awareness concerning the consequences of our way of life. Hope and willful blindness go hand in hand.