Jorinde Voigt – Dyads and Desire

Grieder Contemporary is delighted to present the third solo show of artist Jorinde Voigt in the gallery. Under the title “Dyads and Desire”, the exhibition gathers recent works by the artist, spanning from 2015 to 2023, including her newest series of interlocking sculptures titled “Dyads”, as well as works on paper — or made of paper — which altogether are a testament to Voigt’s complex and profoundly expressive conceptual practice.

Jorinde Voigt’s investigation of perceptual phenomena translates in her work as abstract configurations and systems that depict what can only be described as an “inner world of experience”. Philosophical texts, musical compositions, literature and nature have served the artist as source materials for her constant exploration of perception, sensation and presence. What looks like scientific diagrams or musical scores in her pieces, are a study of what abstract thought looks like or is perceived as by the artist. Visually, Voigt’s works are inextricably linked to drawing as a medium, but in her practice, the artist has come to embrace collage, design, painterly elements and sculpture.

The exhibition “Dyads and Desire” includes works belonging to six different series: “Dyade” (2022-2023), “Rhythm” (2022- 2023), “The sum of all best practices” (2022), “H. Schmitz: Intensität, Atmosphären + Musik” (2021), “Synchronicity” (2016) and “Inherited Desire” (2015). The effect of looking at them together in the exhibition space is similar to listening to the sounds of nature: each work has its own particular way of reverberating, its own harmony and rhythm, yet together they make up a perfect symphony that does not need to be rehearsed and that certainly does not follow a specific musical score.

At the same time, “Dyads and Desire”, as the title suggests, is an invitation for the spectator to engage in a one-to-one relationship with the artworks. Rhythm, synchronicity, repetition, are all elements present in Jorinde Voigt’s pieces and also in the movement generated by the feeling of attraction. Desire is a dance that simultaneously pulls together and pushes away two things, two instances, two people. Such is the dance between the spectator and the works in the exhibition: they pull the viewer inside of them, but remain forever out of its reach. The magnitude, the real depth of the works is a mystery that will never be available, making the desire for it ever more present.

In the same way as the feeling of attraction reveals a certain degree of identification (we identity a part of ourselves in the object of our desire), Voigt’s works speak of each other, or as the artist eloquently said it: “every form of the present speaks of its own past”. In her recent sculptures “Dyade”, constructed from materials such as copper, stainless steel or Corteen steel, we recognise curved formations that had already announced themselves in previous bi-dimensional series such as “Inherited Desire” and “Synchronicity”. The “Dyade” series, however, is much more formally reduced, and its rhythm is generated by only two elements (a dyad, a pair) that interlock in a unique way

The “Rhythm” series, in which the artist creates lines in three dimensions by slicing, cutting, repositioning, and layering coloured paper, is done with a technique reminiscent of the one she used for “The Sum of All Best Practices”. Voigt describes the “Rhythm” series “as a kind of push-and-pull between the whole and its constituent parts. Multiple co-existing rhythms coming together to form an organic unit”. “The Sum of All Best Practices”, on the other hand, focuses on documenting a specific form in a specific place at a specific time, namely assorted leaves that the artist found in city parks on the way to her studio in Berlin between October and November 2021.

Mounting the cut-outs (the collage) onto a mirror is a technique that Voigt utilises both in “The Sum of All Best Practices” and in the series “H. Schmitz: Intensität, Atmosphären + Musik”. This solution allows the artist to show the back of the work, which usually remains unseen, and at the same time, to include the observer as an integral part of the work.

Wether reflected on mirrors or not, the spectator is an active agent in “Dyads and Desire”. Through the act of viewing the dyad between work and observer is complete. (Adriana Domínguez, Zürich, February 2022)

Jorinde Voigt (b. 1977, Frankfurt am Main) is a leading conceptual artist based in Berlin. She studied with Katharina Sieverding at Universität der Künste, Berlin, graduating with her Master of Fine Arts in 2004. From 2014 to 2019, she taught at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, and today she is a Professor of Conceptual Drawing and Painting at University of Fine Arts Hamburg.

She has participated in biennials worldwide, most notably the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2011); Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016); Biennale de Lyon (2017); and Sharjah Biennial (2017).

Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been presented by Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (2020); BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2020); The Menil Collection, Houston (2019); Horst Janssen-Museum, Oldenburg (2019); Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2017); Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2016); Kunsthalle Krems (2015); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2014);the Langen Foundation, Neuss (2013); Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag (2010); as well as Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston (2022).

Voigt’s work is included in the permanent collections of notable institutions worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthaus Zürich; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Bundeskunstsammlung, Bonn; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; Kunsthalle Praha Collection, Prague; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo; and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, among others.

Opening hours Friday, 11 am – 6 pm, and by prior arrangement.

Exhibition Duration 17 March – 21 July 2023

www.grieder-contemporary.com

Location:
Grieder Contemporary
Lärchentobelstrasse 25
8700 Küsnacht
Switzerland