New Balance

Galerie Mazzoli is pleased to invite you to 'New Balance', featuring Berlin-based artists Josephin Hanke and Lukas Liese.
The exhibition presents sculptural installations inspired by a reflection on the idiosyncrasies of Western society. With his installation 'Satt (Calvin, Thommy & Giorgio)', Lukas Liese places three well-fed bellies carved into travertine on steel structures resembling wellness loungers. Named after luxury fashion icons, the body fragments become symbols of affluence and laziness. At the same time, Josephin Hanke presents sportswear and accessoires appropriating the aesthetic of commercial brands, which propagate self-optimization. The slogan on her transparent bomber-jacket urges us to “Be more Human”. The work ironically addresses the conflict involved in the production of goods, as the object designed for self-aggrandizement is actually often realized through human exploitation. Furthermore, the artists transfer ephemeral individual and collective reactions to political and social controversies into a long-lasting material, generating an archive of most recent history; Liese confronts us with excerpts of his American cousins' facebook wall, where trump propaganda and uplifting worldly wisdom collide. Hanke casts the short-lived and blatant flood of images in newspaper clippings on the so-called refugee crisis onto plaster, creating historic distance on a topic that slowly disappears from the headlines, although the humanitarian crisis has not yet been resolved.
The works of Hanke and Liese are characterized by intelligent manipulation and often unusual treatment of matter. In his artistic practice, Lukas Liese challenges the materials and techniques of classical stone sculpting by experimenting with different often alternative treatments, such as using stone-dissolving acids. Josephin Hanke's research-based approach adopts everyday objects as multi-layered symbols and leaves us with ambivalent feelings and unanswered questions on the issues involved. The title 'New Balance' ironically refers to tilting inequalities and underlying tensions in our society, which the young artists follow with an alert eye. In the exhibition, a play with formal balances and contrasts develops between their works.