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4/6/2008

Sebastian Gogel

Emmanuel Post, Leipzig

What expresses itself in Sebastian Gögel's many drawings, paintings and tattoos as drastic images of penetration and gestures of perforation attains a new metaphysical level in the artist's new sculptures. Here, Gögel affords insight into the mental tools, subsidiary forms and primal creatures constituting his visual world. Far beyond apologetic attempts at celebrating beauty within ugliness, the grotesque within the purportedly normal (and vice versa) by means of zealous technical mannerism on the verge of kitsch, Gögel demonstrates in ruthless precision what he is dealing in and what he wants us to look at:

A stalagmitic, upward-growing liquid creature attempts – sopping – to free itself from the shackles of gravity: A great struggle indeed that strains and ultimately succeeds in forcing the nape of this gelatinously supple humanoid into a horizontal position. Yet tautologically, it depends on the Earth's attractive force to get into shape, to further continue its tragicomic growth flow and to excrete its pore deep by-products. In psychogrammatic terms, we are not only shown the liberation of the suppressed, but experience the metallic ossification of a dark force defying instrumenttalism, yet fuelling the convulsions of expression. It is something else which urges us to establish contact, yet what?

The cubature of a simple, insulated wooden box condenses into a psychological riddle as to the meaning of open-mindedness and denseness. The box – variously reminiscent of a refrigerator, coffin, laboratory cabinet, toolbox or architectural model – lies as if marooned, on the floor, its six door flaps wide open. Emanating a positive albeit mysterious presence, the cube has landed underfoot like a visitation from another planet, bringing new air and a different light. In this state of hyperventilation, the capsule forfeits its function as a once-useful box, yet paradoxically attains the status of a receptacle for aesthetic subject matters.

The mirror as the very instrument of self-reflection and, if one is fortunate enough, of self-realization, appears in Gögel's work as an ecstatically crafted vase job. In its shape visibly utilitarian as a mock neoclassicist vessel (perhaps useful as a flowerpot, a champagne bucket, a font, a tennis ball receptacle or a paint brush holder), the object generates optical pandemonium however, as if causing disco and junk recuperated from the Romans by military commander Hannibal to short circuit. In any case, this self-devouring, glass-eating Vorticist vase-flower would garnish perfectly the terrazzo terrace of any German who has been to Italy ('Noodles Make Him Happy') and who fancies the good life, perhaps even likes to paint. It seems to embody the psycho-ornamental symbiosis of two cultures competing between North and South. Yet naturally, it can offer no more than fragmentary particulars of this mystic union – and of the way we look when we think we've got it.

Oliver Kossack, 2008 (artist, lives and works in Leipzig)

Sebastian Gögel, born in Sonneberg/Thuringia, Germany, 1978, lives and works in Leipzig. Studied Painting/Graphic Arts, Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, 1997-2002. Master student with Prof. Sighard Gille, 2002-2005. Since 2005: HAGEL - artistic collaboration with Paule Hammer. Current exhibitions: 'Past-Forward', Zabludowicz Collection / 176, London; solo exhibition at the GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague, The Netherlands (July 12 - Oct. 5, 2008).

Opening june 5, 2008

Emmanuel Post
Windmuhlenstrasse 31b - Leipzig

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