Vera Lossau chose a programmatic title for her exhibition: “dead drop” – as in secret hiding place for exchanging things. Correspondingly, her works are inconspicuous and encrypted.

The exhibition focuses on the production and presentation techniques of art – as Vera Lossau continually widens the concept of material and sculpture, incorporating a narrative category. Her dramatic sculptures, shown in reference to relics from Pompeii, have clearly narrative elements. The dog, paralyzed in its last struggle for life, relates to an ancient finding in Pompeii, where archaeologists discovered the molds human and animal corpses, which they cast in plaster to recreate the forms of the victims of the eruption.

Even though Vera Lossau explores art history, her approach is more complex than simple quotation. She takes the decorative details drawn from art history and architecture through processes of fragmentation and demolition before setting them in their new context. A whole wall of the exhibition is taken up by an installation of ornamental tiles. The tiles’ two-dimensional patterns have been dismantled – each tile is presented as a single piece in its own right, baring traces of labor in its cragged surfaces, cracks or bubbles as references to transience. Her work on the tiles was preceded by intensive studies that led the artist to Spain, Portugal and Iran, among other places.

Connections to art history and cultural phenomena are also evident in Vera Lossau’s black plaster casts of cut canvases, which draw reference to Francisco de Goyas “Pinturas Negras”. They also stand in relation to the dead dog sculpture, as the now destroyed canvases were once painted and intact. Lucio Fontana’s slit canvases from the 1960s come to mind, a reference clearly intended by the artist. The paintings’ dark colors, on the verge to purest absorbing black, that mysterious, melancholy, existentialist color, do not reveal much more than darkness itself and manage to guard what should really be uncovered. Psychology sees the color black as an expression of abstinence and secrecy. The themes of Colossus, Saturn devouring one of his sons and the dog’s head in Vera Lossau’s sculptures have also been borrowed from Goya’s “Black Paintings”.

It is the moment or the conscious process of transforming a given situation from a state of destruction and evanescence to a positive development and dissolution, which lies at the center of Vera Lossau’s inner struggle and artistic expression. This magical moment of flux, advancing from a catastrophe, a hopeless situation or nothingness, gives us an idea of the artist’s notion of “constructive nihilism”. It is most evident in her beautifully made, polished bronze casts of burst car tyres. As actual scraps from dangerous accidents they are relics of our fleeting existence.

Vera Lossau’s multi-faceted works avoid being too naturalistic or close to her themes, which she always translates into her unique, never too rigid and occasionally humorous form.

Vera Lossau (born in 1976) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Rita McBride and Magdalena Jetelova. She has already presented her works in a number of solo shows, among them exhibitions at Kunstverein Mönchengladbach (2005), Stadtmuseum Hattingen (2008) and the Ernst & Young Artforum in Düsseldorf (2008). Her works are currently on view at the Museum Baden in Solingen until August 30, and at the Städtische Galerie in Remscheid between June 27 and August 23.

upcoming

• Ann-Kristin Hamm
  15 Okt 2010 - 27 Nov 2010

on view

• Maurizio Anzeri "Lunatico"
  03 Sep 2010 - 09 Okt 2010

archive