45 1/4 x 35 1/2 in
Titled Heavy Eyes, Michael Sailstorfer’s new works for this exhibition are integrated within contexts of materiality and allegory.
Michael Sailstorfer’s artistic practice is intimately involved with the innate, transformative properties of material. His interdisciplinary experimentations emphasize chemical interactions which discern their metaphorical interpretations, and are directed towards an outcome that is in many ways orchestrated and unforeseeable.
Sailstorfer’s diverse, sculptural investigations revolve around the dismantling and deconstructing of everyday objects, and situating them in different circumstances. His works are situated within a configured hermeneutics, and highlights a shift - or a readjusting of significance.
Characterized by Sailstorfer’s technical approach, his compositions instigate an open-ended exploration into the inextricable ties between a variety of mediums, and their more immediate or imaginative associations. The exhibition portrays this conceptual notion by examining “weight” in its physical and metaphysical equivalents, and simultaneously opens pathways for perceiving the framework of thought that underpins Sailstorfer’s larger body of work.
Michael Sailstorfer’s Heavy Eyes was developed from an earlier series titled Heavy Tears; works made with lipstick on lead. This poetically conveyed contrast of materials is what ultimately suspends these paintings in a space that teeters between here and beyond, an interspace - from the ephemeral, dust-like nature of the eyeshadow pigments, graphically cutting across a darker, lead surface. Their glistening, multi-colored appearance underneath the light places these works in neither a state of permanence or impermanence.
Composed of eyeshadow pigments collected from varying cosmetic companies and applied onto lead panels, his series of paintings deconstruct implicit historical, social and political references to applications of lead as an industrial component. It is this interplay which defines the balance between solemnness and playfulness within Sailstorfer’s work - as observed from the aluminium and plexi-glass sculptures modelled after modernistic sunglasses. Surrounding the space with their mass and immediate presence, each is an investigation that treads on the periphery of the field of architecture.
The sculptures simultaneously build upon several other themes Sailstorfer explores, which inextricably delves into branches of beauty and fashion. Their angular forms and sharp corners are reminiscent of contemporary trends within these industries, and alongside these lead works; these tired, although decorated “eyes”, are mostly disguised beneath these stylized sunglasses.
The exhibition navigates these distinct nuances in medium to spark a dialogue centered on their juxtaposition, which encompasses Michael Sailstorfer’s overarching body of work. In illuminating underlying concepts of form and time, he emphasizes them as factors by which to identify, inform, and perpetually renew our manner of discernment.
