The Bernier/Eliades Gallery is pleased to present the newest solo exhibition of the German artist Christiane Löhr, opening on Friday 29th of April in the Brussels Gallery. The exhibition will feature a series of oil stick and ink drawings, prints and sculptures.
Christiane Löhr (b. Wiesbaden, Germany, 1965) lives and works between Cologne in Germany and Prato in Italy. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Jannis Kounnellis and has become known internationally through her participation in various exhibitions including the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, her exhibition at the Villa e Collezione Panza in Varese, Italy in 2010, at the Vangi Museum, Shizuoka in 2015, at Kunsthaus Baselland/Muttenz in 2016, at Museo Capodimonte, Naples in 2020 and at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin in 2021.
Christiane Löhr’s work evolves through her direct contact with nature, where she collects plant stalks, dandelion, ivy seeds and many other organic elements which she uses to construct sculptures resembling of everyday objects and architecture. By the use of horsehairs, she crates shapes and webs that exit the bidimensional, invading the space.
Domes, pyramids and other architectural structures transform the light and fragile nature of Löhr’s chosen materials through their intrinsic geometry, making them solid and stable. Her sculptures reveal the vital and plastic power of the ephemerality in nature. The softness and evanescence of her works revitalise the way of thinking about sculpture, that in this case presents composure and equilibrium without the need of heaviness or gravity.
The focus on conceiving, creating and locating forms in space are the common denominator between her sculptures and her drawings. If the sculptures create settings concentrated in space, the abstract lines of the drawings, on the contrary, explore the empty space of the paper. They open up to the outside environment, striving for more space in which to evolve. The artist describes it as a “flow out, from the inside out“. Visually, the structures seek space far beyond the border of the paper, seeming to grow endlessly and occupy the room.