Sara Gassmann
born 1980 in Dagmersellen CH | currently lives and works in Basel CH
ㅇ Stay in ㅣ 2015
ㅇ Email ㅣ gassmannsara@gmail.com
ㅇ Homepage | www.saragassmann.ch
EDUCATION
11-13 Master of Arts in Contemporary Arts Practice, University of the Arts Bern
10/11 Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts Geneva University of Art and Design
08-10 Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
07/08 Foundation Class, Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, Alfter near Bonn D
02-06 Studies in Political Science, University Bern
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
14 Sara Gassmann & Francisca Silva, STADTGALERIE, Bern
Die Netze des Himmels sind weit, FELIX, Liebefeld
Sara Gassmann & Paul Lipp, AKKU KUNSTPLATTFORM, Emmenbrucke
13 Doppelwandig, collaboration with Lukas Veraguth, CABANE B, Bumpliz
Schneeschmelze, LA PLACETTE, Lausanne
12 zu Besuch in Nichtberuhringen, im Schaufenster, KRETHLOW GALERIE, Bern
der Fall des mini Regals, LOEBLAGER, Bern
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
15 Ortstermin, STADTMUHLE, Willisau
Die Basis, KUNSTHAUS, Langenthal
14 Jahresausstellung Zentralschweizer Kunstschaffen, KUNSTMUSEUM, Luzern
50 Jahre Ateliergenossenschaft Basel, KUNSTHALLE, Basel
Werkbeitrage 14 Kanton und Stadt Luzern, KORNSCHUTTE, Luzern
Aeschlimann-Corti Stipendium, KUNSTHAUS, Langenthal
13 Lion, ION, Zurich
show me show me show me, CENTRE PASQUART, Bienne
site specific, URGENT PARADISE, Lausanne
aktuelle Kunst aus der Region 2013, SANKTURBANHOF, Sursee
12 Jahresausstellung Zentralschweizer Kunstschaffen, KUNSTMUSEUM, Luzern
Cantonale Berne Jura, LA NEF, Noirmont
el museo de la resistencia, proposition Galeria daniel moron, LOCAL, Providencia CL
the dark side of fook moon, URGENT PARADISE, Lausanne
Bonjour Monsieur Duchamp, KUNSTPAVILLON, Munchen D
die Folgen von Venedig, PROGR, Bern
11 Cantonale Berne Jura, CENTRE PASQUART, Bienne
the harder they come, DUPLEX, Geneve
we saw the cat in the cave, BROOM SOCIAL CLUB, Geneve
no room to move. AGENT DOUBLE, Geneve
AWARDS / RESIDENCIES
15 Artist Recidency at Art Space_GEUMCHEON, Seoul KR
14 Work grant from the City of Lucerne
Marti Clerici Stiftung, Chur
13 Artist Recidency at Inside–Out Art Museum, Beijing CN
Marti Clerici Stiftung, Chur
COLLECTIONS
15 Kunstsammlung Inselspital, Bern
14 Kulturforderungskomission Kanton Luzern
13 Kunstsammlung Inselspital, Bern
12 Sammlung Marlies Kornfeld, Bern
Sammlung Elsbeth Jordi, Gumligen
ㅇ Works
GHIACCIO ZUCCHERATO 2014
acrylic, acrylicspray, ink on cotton
120x120cm – 120x100 – 90x65cm
Exhibitionsview: KUNSTMUSEUM LUZERN, Jahresausstellung 2014Exhibitionsview: KORNSCHUTTE LUZERN, Werkbeitrage 2014
Exhibitionsview: AKKU EMMENBRUCKE, Sara Gassmann&Paul Lipp 2014
Exhibitionsview: STADTGALERIE BERN, Sara Gassmann&Francisa Silva 2014
Exhibitionsview: LA PLACETTE LAUSANNE, Schneeschmelze 2013
FROSTMUSTERBODEN 2014
pigment, shellac, wood
450x280cm
DIE EROBERUNG DER MO NDBERGE 2013
different canvas 2013
MIRALITE.EVOLUTION 2014
acrylic, glaze color, glass, concrete
Installation
SCHNEESCHMELZE 2013
SCHNEESCHMELZE 2013
Acrylic, gouache, window color on wall and window
322cm x 203cm x 128cm
‘Patient Improvisation’ and 'Moment with Mature Consideration', Sara Gassmann
Hong Kyeong Han(art critic)
1. The animation film, <The Piano Forest>(2008) led many audiences to the fantasy with sweet music and its unique subject matter. At first glance, <The Piano Forest>(2008) directed by Koujima Masayuki seems to be about the innocent friendship and conflict, but in fact, it shows the world composed of the reality and imagination, perception and non-perception at the same time by using a piano as a medium.
Actually, this full-length film goes back and forth between the reality and fantasy. Once the lights shine over the forest, uncanny, mysterious scenes are unfolded, and once the protagonist, Kai plays the piano, the unknown world is opened, where we can't know that the world playing the piano is true, or the world after playing the piano is true. But, unfortunately when he stops playing the piano, the forest returns to its original state, the fantasy doesn't last, and silence adapts to the cold light of reality.
This writter also peeps at the different layers in the works of Sara Gassmann as the scene in the movie. But not clear. So, it is read as the boundary space, time reiteration and border line area where all the distinguishments and divisions are folding.
When I first encountered his works at the Geumcheon Art Space, they made others wander 'between' consciousness and unconsciousness or made them befog through the lights projected into the space and the objects. The colours and drawings which are rough and free made other's feelings reflux, and made the images which haven't experienced summon. While definitely stood in the realistic space, the images also infiltrating into the hidden side existed with the conflicting relation under the blank margin in the point of contact where asks the existence of the light again because the light makes the colour, the color makes the light. Rather, it is more like the dual plot including the illusion and existence, reality and imagination, or fantasy and realism under the compatible composition binding up the material and non-material state.
When I encounter his works today again, there doesn't exist any form which is able to be cognitive, too. Nevertheless, the drawings reflecting the feelings, the colors and sides which at first sight, feel rifled through, but are under the fixed order, and the place as a specific meaning crossing the definition of existence circulate overlapped like each musical note. And this musical note becomes the element amplifying other's emotional situation and shows the metrical language. As a example, in <frostmusterboden>(2014), she made the people peep at the very colorful world, and in <wenn platten im erdinnern verschlungen werden>(2013), she accommodated the world full of love, yearning, homesickness, hope and joy captured by the artist's eyes. Especially, in many freewheeling paintings like <was am endebleibt |2>(2014), she seems to present a physical muon who went through finding enlightenment by using the flowery colors and many symbolic gestures like the mysterious closet appearing in the movie, <The Chronicles of Narnia>.
This work is possible because this work doesn't satisfy only visual sense, but also through assimilating the shapeless image with the weight of the light. It awakens the illusion of freedom and feels like the images in the dream or imagination as if we read the novel,『El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan』written by Jorge Luis Borges, but as the images of the non-realistic space and the artist's own emotional pieces are overlapped, it shows the pattern which the concrete visual pieces are mixed in one place and breathe.
We can also see these phenomena in his another works including <miralite-evolution>(2014) which builded the glass on the concrete, and in the recent work, <blind mirrors in the forst N°19>(2015), too. Although these works focus more on the placeness where the works were placed, they also open the world where causes the waves between space and object-light and color-recognition and non-recognition and unidentified by the naked eye because the inside and outside are integrated. It would be fair to say that she hopes to reach to the another world while she doesn't abandon the reality through covering the occult symbol on the conscious situation. And she thinks that we can overturn something that we think about and the absolute trust on the reality, if we only take the different view on the fixed ones,
But, we can't easily perceive these from the objet and the surrounding colors which fill the interior of the exhibition space. No, rather, there is a aspect to be seen as a enigma. But, in a comprehensive perspective, it is also true that these features are placed as a characteristic of Sara Gassmann's works.
2. in Sara Gassmann's works, although it is not the world where the human being can't perceive, we can capture the imaginary world where people undoubtedly believe its existence. It is fully extensive through encountering with lights, and in other words, we can think that it connotes the narration about the simultaneity, the layers which don't have the access from the space and time. This describes the fact that although there is a lack of visibility, it doesn't mean that we can predicate that it doesn't exist, and in this account, she may rethink on all the objects after taking out the realistic world beyond the human view, believing in the invisible world.
But, the most important thing here is that Sara Gassmann's most works call more attention to the reality out of the reality, and show the mental things which are difficult to describe verbally. Especially, it is very interesting point that unlike the sleek blank margins in the works such as Daniel Buren, James Turrell, and Mental Klinik, she makes the people pay attention to space once again through making the familiar space unfamiliar. So, such a result is dependent not on how are the fragments of her thought relating to the non-real thing described, but on how are those things interconnected with each other, and this is her aesthetic axis. By using this clue, today, we can understand Sara Gassmann's world of art works.
Sara Gassmann‘s works which this writter encounters put a emphasis on expressing sensuously 'something that is not the only one or the only once end exists, but many ends exist and furthermore, even the end itself doesn't exist.' Although the artist's works are primarily inspired by the reality including herself, it is difficult to deny the aspect that she opens the artistic view from the happenings around her, and accommodates it intuitively through adjusting herself to her surroundings. This sense which comes from the artist's own inner point has a characteristic of lightening the time and space, responding to every surrounding with the flow of air. It appears to me that as if it is Emmanuel Levinas' time awareness, or the time awareness is to sense something. And Sara Gassmann forms a new time-space, becoming herself the time-space beyond space and time through her works made by the lights.
By the way, if you look fixedly at Sara Gassmann‘s works, you would know that the emptiness is the same to the lights, the lights exists in spite of being invisible to the human eyes, and the existence is splendid with the colors through being brought into the world as a life. In her paintings, we can discover the lines embracing lights, the color as a crystal, the beauty of harmony crossing between time and space, and equilibrium beauty which has a energy with all the thing bundled up in one screen. But, in some cases, the artist herself become the flow with the lights coming in endlessly, penetrating into the inner layer. This writter defines this as ‘patient improvisation’ and 'moment with mature consideration'.
Her recent works are far distant from describing precisely the form of the object as it is or the similar ways, and in the analysis about the form through the inference from the pre-sense of beauty, that meaning is reduced, too. Rather, her works proceed to be mixed and interacted with the surrounding space while the consideration about the principle, 'A Being as far as it is a Being' and it's cause is engraved as the works shining light. Especially, we can know that the consistent unartificlal languages are floating, and the languages link real space and space in pictures, existing between the painting style(畵體) and theme of painting. Sometimes, because the interpretation of her works are completely left on the audience, the people who encounter with her works are internally moved by the space, and perceive the inward agitation without even realizing it. That is because, like traditional Korean paper, Hanji(韓紙), her painting which preserves the characteristics and properties of the paper with its natural state or the installation spying on the unknown leads the audience to the endless circuit of time. Through the flickering lights.
