For her fourth solo show at the gallery, titled GOO, Lucie Stahl presents a sculptural work - a lonesome rider - alongside a photographic series of encrusted wells, shot in 2019 in an abandoned oil field in Qark Fier, Albania. Focussing in on these close-ups of spillings she delves into a sort of petro-surrealistic realm - fluid reflections of sunlight and darkness. She quite literally uses the formless fuel to feed a fantastical world of opalescent likenesses.
The rapid process of the world’s images and their perception takes on a properly geological dimension in Stahl’s work, with cycles of humidification and disaggregation of the layers of meanings. The organic combines with the mineral, like raw matter with processed products and architecture. States of the object and the image which have evolved beyond their status as commodities to be fetishized, with a relation to the human.
Stahl’s work plays with the notion of liquidity in its many forms—from finance to bodily fluids, and the malleability of gender, identity, and images. In all her work, the artist explores the trappings of modern day consumer culture through found objects, sites and imagery, addressing branding, consumption, addiction, dependency and excess.
Lucie Stahl was born in 1977 in Berlin, where she currently lives and works. She will be the subject of a solo exhibition in Kunstverein Bonn on March 2022. Previous solo presentation include Fri Art, Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland, Concentrations 60, Dallas Museum of Art, and Spirit, Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg, among others. Her work is included in the collections of Musee de l’art moderne, Paris, CNAP Paris, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis and 21er Haus, Vienna, among others.