Flowstones/Surrender

For Amsterdam Art Week, Van Oosterom Gallery is presenting new work by Audrey Large and Jonas Lutz, two artists who live and work in Rotterdam. This exhibition will be on view during Amsterdam Art Week at Brandt Gallery.

FLOWSTONES

Through sensory rather than discursive choices in her use of materials with ambiguous surfaces, Audrey Large offers a metaphysical commentary on how we perceive our material world. She questions what is real and what belongs to representation, thereby undermining that distinction. The result is sculptural objects that stimulate the senses, with a vitality that stands in stark contrast to the mechanical world of digital tools.

Flowstones presents nine new works that explore the space between vase and plinth. The series is characterised by a grainy, stone-like materiality, achieved through sand binder jetting, a 3D printing technique capable of materialising highly complex geometries. The aesthetic refers to geological formation, a solidification of digital images. The series includes some of her largest works to date.

SURRENDER

The word ‘surrender’ came to Jonas Lutz via his great-uncle Edward, a soldier and a Christian. Whenever his grandmother worried too much, he would say to her: ‘Eleanore, surrender.’ The word has stayed with him ever since. Over the past year, it has become a silent mantra, one he returns to in moments of stress or anxiety. Giving up. Admitting defeat. Letting go.

There’s no such thing as a house party anymore, at least not the sort we used to have when we were twenty-five. Intimate, excessive, just barely out of control. Friends have had children, got jobs, taken on responsibilities; the freedom that was once taken for granted has slipped away.

In Surrender, the party is re-enacted in the gallery, a reconstruction that is also a transposition. What remains of a party when the circumstances have changed? Is anyone actually dancing? And what is it asking us to surrender to?