Zyrland Zoiropa, Berlin x The Horse, Dublin
Kesewa Aboah, Inigo Batterham, Robert Lakomczyk, Elizabeth Ravn
Zyrland Zoiropa x The Horse presents a group of artists working across themes of cross-pollination, lived experience, archivization, and cosmopolitanism. Each of those artists uses image-making processes and approaches contrasting visions of subjecthood and objecthood, of labour, and of what is valued.
The paintings by Elizabeth Ravn are scenes from her life in the city of Berlin. Figures occupy the ground of each painting, and the atmosphere oscillates between the quaint and the countercultural. In these impressionistic scenes, the viewer is offered a glimpse into the day-to-day experiences of youthful living in the metropolis.
Robert Lakomczyk’s archival paintings depict stolen jewels, the source images of which come from the Interpol archive of Stolen Works of Art. Born in the DDR and having come of age before the wall came down, he is interested in the storage of monetary value and its persisting power within the contemporary world. How and why value is assigned to objects, and what happens when it changes hands, properly or illicitly, are questioned in these paintings.
The painterly works of Kesewa Aboah are inherently bodily. The Ghanaian-British artist literally incorporates her body into her work, coating her skin in pigment or ink. She presses her body onto paper, creating visceral imprints that become the starting point for richly textured compositions. Around these impressions, she works meticulously with embroidery, dry pigment, walnut oil, and thread, creating layered surfaces that sit somewhere between figuration and abstraction, evoking skin, fabric, and organic forms.
Inigo Batterham paintings construct a private symbolic universe shaped by spirituality, psychological fragility, and the landscape of the Burren, a karst landscape on the west coast of Ireland. The paintings he presents combine sacred geometry, ambiguous figures, and contemplative colour fields, which, in reference to the intentions of early Modernism, explore loss, ecstasy, and transcendence. Resisting art-world fashion, the paintings feel intimate and reverent, yet rebellious in their old-school nature.
https://www.zyrlandzoiropa.com/
