Sies + Höke is pleased to show Container, Berlin-based artist Claudia Wieserʼs third solo exhibition at the gallery.

Claudia Wieser (*1973, Freilassing) creates works on paper, objects and installations that revolve around the contrast between old and new: her wallpaper installations in this exhibition, for example, feature early 20th century photographs of antique sculptures next to imagery of contemporary art and design; her delicate gold leaf drawings on handmade paper are offset by yellow neon light; her highly polished, hard-edged metal sculptures are counterbalanced by a hand-glazed ceramic tile panel which has been enamelled with real gold. In her work, traditional handicrafts and materials such as hand-blown glass sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, intricately coloured wood objects or complex drawings made of gold leaf and coloured pencil meet digital printing methods and clean cut geometric objects made of mirror or shiny metal.

With her use of “old” or “borrowed” imagery and techniques, Wieser aims to appropriate a certain aura, a particular stipulation that comes with certain objects or images. Using gold leaf, for example, she conjures up notions of value, beauty, secrecy, fortune or plain warmth. Her use of century-old photographic images carries different connotations than had she taken the photograph herself today: their blurriness, imperfections and scratches carry their own story. The geometric shapes she uses in her drawings also have a history; they are symbols for perfection, longing and continuity, and of course they point to countless arthistoric predecessors. Merging the old and the new, existing resources and novel ideas, according to Wieser can be like joining two parts and creating a whole.

A certain tension and disruption however is also key to Wieserʼs work. To this end, she creates successions of reflections, both real and misleading ones, printed and reprinted on her wallpapers, and doubled up and reflected in the metal sculptures. In this exhibition, the wallpaper is placed in the roomʼs centre on a pentagon-shaped wall structure, creating a sculptural, if not architecture-twisting effect that dazzles, confuses and requires movement within the space in order to fully perceive. The viewer thus experiences the exhibition in transit, is inspired to meander, reflect and conflict. The showʼs title, Container, refers to something being “contained”, beheld, embraced or embodied. It is perhaps an allusion to the numerous influences in Wieserʼs work being united in one larger entity; but also to the viewer, who circumnavigates and absorbs, traversing a cultural landscape of ancient and modern that negotiates itself as a contemporary experience.

As a special project, and also “contained” within this exhibition, one room of the gallery is dedicated to New York-based artist Lisa Oppenheim, on invitation by Claudia Wieser.

Claudia Wieser lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Mirror, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2013); Galerie Kamm, Berlin (2013); Furniture, KIOSK, Ghent (2012); Auch in geschlossenen Räumen müssen echte Sachen liegen, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (2012); Galleria S.A.L.E.S, Rom (2012); Muster und Formen, Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin (2011) and Poems of the Right Angle, The Drawing Center, New York (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2013); Prix Canson Nominees, Petit Palais, Paris (2013); Goldrausch, Villa Merkel, Esslingen (2013) and Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2012); Punkt Systeme. Vom Pointilismus zum Pixel, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (2012); Asche und Gold, Marta Herford / Museum Schloss Moyland (2012); HotSpot Berlin, Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin (2011); Kosmos Rudolf Steiner, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart / Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2011) and Intensif-Station, 26 Künstlerräume im K21, K21 Kunstsammlungen Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2010).