ANTOINETTE VON SAURMA
Raven Schlossberg
Brooklyn, NY, USA
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Brooklyn, NY, USA
"In the final scene of Zabriskie Point, Antonioni’s 1970 homage to American hippies, a Frank Lloyd Wright-style, upper-middle-class home explodes to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s ‘Heart Beat, Pig Meat’. A sequence of jump-cuts, with the house erupting and objects within it flying forward, is repeated four times. First, the house becomes an inferno, then, in the next series of frames,
a roast chicken is thrust from its plate, a...
"In the final scene of Zabriskie Point, Antonioni’s 1970 homage to American hippies, a Frank Lloyd Wright-style, upper-middle-class home explodes to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s ‘Heart Beat, Pig Meat’. A sequence of jump-cuts, with the house erupting and objects within it flying forward, is repeated four times. First, the house becomes an inferno, then, in the next series of frames,
a roast chicken is thrust from its plate, a television set is propelled forward, and other banal objects that dominate and define America’s cultural values are reduced to shrapnel. After the initial shock subsides, the intense beauty of the images overrides their violence.
Raven Schlossberg’s collages are similarly explosive. But while Antonioni was mainly concerned with congratulating the hippies on their quest for a combustible future, Schlossberg is trying to navigate her way constructively through the recent past’s cultural rubble.
Schlossberg’s collages are constructed from layers of vintage media images, kinetically charged drawings in ink, graffiti-like trails of enamel or acrylic paint. Ranging in size from laptop to human-scale, the collages appear as details from cultural archives. Crafted with exquisite compulsion, they are clotted with social theory, cultural fiction and ubiquitous desire. As entire images, the collages are tactile and literary, embodying the semiotic distinction between sign and signifier but also seductive visual pleasure. Her imagery and musically pulsating colours maintain this pleasure even while she stimulates a cool critique of her references."
Ana Finel Honigman, Contemporary Magazine
Raven Schlossberg's work envisions a Technicolor, psychedelic dystopia where the trappings of glamour thinly veil society’s seedy underbelly. Compressing implied narratives into storyboarded picture planes, the artist stages a surreal, sexual wilderness. Interacting between planes ripped open through trompe l'oeil effects, characters enter and leave each picture through windows or "tears", implying further action behind and between the scenes. Her source materials are as diverse as the characters, with images culled from sexploitation and horror films, pulp crime and adventure magazines, comics, 1980s graphics and punk magazines, posters and fanzines. Reimagined through manipulation, alteration and redrawing, these images are distilled into unified worlds populated by an interchangeable troupe of performers who move seamlessly between works. The illusion of neon light, an effect she has achieved using a complex process of dyeing, painting and printing onto fabric, adds to the radiant, kaleidoscopic mood. Light is also literally employed in assemblages constructed from distressed and deconstructed musical instruments and vintage exit signs, illuminating Schlossberg's deep ties to the underground music scene.
Raven Schlossberg has exhibited her collage paintings internationally for over twenty years, including solo exhibitions in cities such as New York, Dallas, Berlin, Frankfurt, Bonn, Konstanz, Brussels, Basel and Paris. In addition to a solo exhibition at Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen, Germany, her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Haus am Lützowplatz, Norton Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Katonah Museum of Art, and The Hunterdon Art Museum. Schlossberg's work has been the subject of radio interviews as well as articles, interviews and reviews in publications including Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art, New York Magazine, Beaux Arts and The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Raven Schlossberg's Brooklyn studio with the works "Lust Pulls the Trigger" and "Bad Boy" in progress
Exhibition installation view of "Shiny Blackness In Our One Track Eyes" and "Two Groupies For A One Man Band"
What is it about your studio space that inspires you?
I've been working in this Brooklyn studio for about 15 years. The storefront space has a very rich history, having been at certain times early last century a bar frequented by longshoremen and gangsters, a "social" club as well as a bordello, so the walls and floorboards are steeped in history, encouraging me to daydream and invent stories of what might have been.
What advice has had the biggest impact on your career?
I once had a professor who, during a group painting critique asked a student who showed up without any work to present, "why did you do that?" The student replied that he couldn't afford to buy paint. The professor calmly asked the student if he had a stereo. When he replied "yes", the professor told him to "sell your stereo and buy paint... art is sacrifice". This simple yet profound idea has left a lasting impression on me and has made me work even harder.
If you could install your art absolutely anywhere, where would that be?
Besides MoMA?
If you weren´t an artist, what would you be doing?
Playing guitar.
What are your favourite places besides your studio?
Junkyards, old motels and dive bars.
2015
Raven Schlossberg - Daytrippin' Nightskippin', Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City, NY, USA
2013
Raven Schlossberg - To The Manner Born, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City, NY, USA
2009
The Road South, Light & Sie, Dallas, TX, USA
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2017
Female Ejaculation Vol. 1, Curated by Jonny Star, Kosmetiksalon Babette, Berlin, Germany
2015
You Can Feel It, Curated by Jonny Star, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany
2014
The Amusing Style, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City, NY, USA
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