With 'Caligula' Gogel and Schmuckle create a highly fascinating interplay by immediately referencing each other's work and through elaborate finesse and aggressive explorations of artistic means. Gogel's monumental mixed-media-sculpture meets Schmuckle's artificial floral-insectoid constructions as Indian ink drawings on paper.
With /CALIGULA/, Sebastian Gögel and Miron
Schmückle create a highly fascinating interplay by immediately referencing each
other's work and through elaborate finesse and aggressive explorations
of artistic means. Gögel's monumental mixed-media-sculpture meets
Schmückle's artificial floral-insectoid constructions as Indian ink
drawings on paper.
Gögel's formal vocabulary lives on an opulent repletion which allows for
all kind of conceivable extremes. His sculpture 'Kassierer' appears as a
beguiling metaphor for a world full of power-addicted excess on the
brink of self-destruction. Radical opposites such as giving and taking,
grandeur and wackiness are dealt with concretely and symbolically at the
same time: Luscious, vigorous volutes contrast with cumbersome, drooping
sculptural fragments. Figuratively, innumerable reasons emerge as to why
things do not last forever and why civilizations collapse.
Similarly, Schmückle's baroque Indian ink works draw their energy from
exuberant formal richness in sensual overabundance which already
comprises decay and destruction. As erotically charged compositions they
convey bodily sensations, wishes, and dreams which retain their
ambivalence in the highly stylized, fantastic netting between a
pretentious depiction of nature and idealized, almost repugnant
artificiality.
As a synonym for power, /CALIGULA/ conjures both artistic-philosophical
aspects and the rearing ugly head of menace.
Image: Sebastian Goegel & Miron Schmueckle . CALIGULA, 2010
Opening reception Friday, September 10, 2010, 7 pm
EMMANUEL POST
Windmühlenstraße 31b, 04107 Leipzig
Wednesday - Saturday, 2 - 6 pm
Special opening hours:
September 11, 2010: 11 am - 9 pm
September 12, 2010: 11 am - 6 pm
Free admission