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Kasmin is pleased to debut a new series of sculpture by American artist vanessa german (b. 1976) at Frieze Los Angeles, on view at Booth E14. This focused presentation will be the first to spotlight german’s developing use of rose quartz as a primary medium in her sculptural practice. In this body of work, which includes a dozen sculpted heads adorned with crystals alongside a larger assemblage figure, german draws on the material’s symbolic associations to powerfully invoke themes of love, healing, resistance, and redemption. Featuring works realized especially for Frieze Los Angeles, select artworks in this presentation will be accompanied by an audio component in the form of “prayers” recorded by the artist, accessible on site for visitors to experience.
Rose quartz gives these sculptures their distinctive translucent pink color and light-reflective qualities. With documented use in ancient Mesopotamia through the present day, these crystals are representative of both the material nature of our existence—they are forms that emerge from the earth—as well as the unbounded nature of time and space, or the larger frequencies and spectrums on which our present lives exist. In line with german’s cultivation of ancestral wisdom, rose quartz is believed to encourage a reunification of body, mind, and spirit, offered as a salve in a society overwhelmed by a growing epidemic of loneliness and isolation. In these works, german creates intricate surface patterns with the rose quartz, occasionally integrating additional natural materials including pyrite, blue lapis, chalcedony, and strawberry quartz over sculpted and painted plaster.
german’s works are spiritual activations and inquiries that embrace love as an original and infinite human technology, an ethos that the artist affirms as a vital way of being. Through her materials and imagery, german summons a transformation akin to the power of healing. This dimension of spirituality has defined the artist’s career for over a decade.
german has previously utilized rose quartz in important works including Love Poem for Little Kim (2022, now in the permanent collection of the Akron Art Museum) and WALK IN BEAUTY: for journey into the wilderness of one’s own heart and Soul—into the deepest wilderness of being that resounds in intimate entanglement with all of nature and all of time—boots to get you to this most certain room of your heart. The latter, a pair of riding boots in unpolished quartz stones, was included in the artist’s 2022-23 installation MUSEUM OF EMANCIPATORY OBJECTS at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum—an emancipatory response to the collection of the nearby Skinner Museum, an early 20th-century cabinet of curiosities—and will be on view at Frieze Los Angeles.
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About the Artist
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Lee Krasner: The Edge of Color, Geometric Abstractions 1948–53
February 22 – March 28, 2024 509 West 27th Street, New YorkKasmin is proud to announce its fourth solo exhibition at the gallery of work by acclaimed American Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner, featuring paintings from the collections of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and several prominent institutions. -
Tide Pool
February 22 – March 30, 2024 297 Tenth Avenue, New York
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vanessa german at Frieze Los Angeles
Santa Monica Airport, February 29 – March 3, 2024
