Cirrus Gallery is pleased to present Sonja Gerdes’ Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. Air for Free. Uncertainty. Absurdity. You look at it but it doesn’t exist. Anahata. Vishuda rising. Unpredictability. This is the artist’s first exhibition with Cirrus Gallery.
For her solo exhibition, Sonja Gerdes presents sculpture, video, photography and writings that not only probe our disdainful relationship to the environment, but consider the convergence of technology and organic life, and the malleable, amorphous mind as a means to create and embark upon a utopian future.
The exhibition takes as its starting point, Gerdes’ preoccupation with the accessibility of air – an invisible substance that is in every crevice of our surroundings, and despite the various contaminants modernity has introduced, continues to bestow us with life. In considering our rapport with oxygen, Gerdes suggests the use of a science-fiction concept, Oxygenenergizer (OE), which creates energy through air. The notion of an engine that runs purely on air, presents an alternative approach to the environment, and in its absurdity, suggests the fluidity and liberation of thought as a possibility in addressing change.
Oxygenenergizer takes various forms and personas within the exhibition. In the main gallery, we see Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. You look at it but it doesn’t exist., an installation of unique bronze, ceramic and metal sculptures entwined with wool and fragments of industrial objects. Through shifting configurations of the works within the space, Gerdes considers moments of infinite impossibilities, while activating a sense of what it means to be amorphous — abstract, ambiguous, absurd and uncertain. Gerdes continues to envelop us in her utopian world, with her Talisman for Oxygenenergizer. These entrancingly blue, bronze sculptures serve as power tools to send endless energy to the unknown and create a belief system for something that may not exist. While they are unidentifiable in shape, they contain subtle impressions of the industrial world, alluding to the amalgamation of forms, both inanimate and organic.
As part of Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. Air for Free. Uncertainty. Absurdity.You look at it but it doesn’t exist. Anahata. Vishuda rising. Unpredictability, Sonja Gerdes will be conducting office hours for questions on the amorphous and environmental activation. The office will be open during the opening reception and during specific gallery hours for the duration of the exhibition. Gerdes will inhabit the show as one of OEs alter egos to raise questions about how one can reconstitute human desire and psychology by looking at amorphous shapes. What if we live in an area of amorphousness through global warming?
Within this frame, Gerdes will collaborate with various groups on questions pertaining to the Anthropocene and environmental activation. By organizing meetings with environmental groups, the artist will be addressing how the individual and collective can be active in this field. As part of the program, a number of creative thinkers and organizations have been asked to participate, including Judith Sönnicken, Carol Cheh, Alika Cooper, Martin Velez, and LA-based social practice project, Big City Forum, which will contribute with cross disciplinary programming and activations related to the themes explored in the exhibit.
Sonja Gerdes was born in 1979 in Germany. She studied at the University of the Arts in Berlin, and from 2007-2013, co-ran the Berlin-based artist run space, Infernoesque. Recent exhibitions include Grey Goo Gardens, Marfa, Texas; Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. You look at it but it doesn’t exist. Air for free, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; molybdomancy, LACA, Los Angeles, CA; The Elegant Universe, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. Featuring Ripped Vixen, PG4S and Gomez Bros Inc., Los Angeles, CA; Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. Berries and Balls, Light and Wire Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Pie of Trouble. Let’s Hang. The Energy Plan, Elephant, Los Angeles, CA; vague horde disrepair in blue clay accretion, Note On, Berlin, Germany; Imitation Game, Dubai/Sharjah; In an Absolut World True Taste Comes Naturally, Camberwell Space, London, UK; Pulsar Nebula Supernova, District, Berlin, Germany; Sole Searching, Laura Mars Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Unblinking Eye, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Berlin, Germany; and informell natur, Sabine Knust, Berlin, Germany. Her work can be found in a number of private collections.