Esther Kläs CHERE: Sculpture

Kläs’s sculpture, though abstract, evokes the body. Metaphor and symbolism are refused in favour of direct experience. Her objects are complete in themselves and displayed in dialogue with each other and the space they inhabit. Their placement and rearrangement follow both plan and accident. The residue of the sculptural process is evident in her eccentric forms. Kläs’s sensibility seems to be rooted in the interstices between Mimimalism and Postminimalism, between strict reduction of means and bodily reference, including a performative aspect.

For CHERE: Sculpture, her first exhibition with the gallery, Kläs has conceived an installation of vertical monoliths, hanging works, and floor pieces at the end of the ground floor space. Her monoliths in pigmented resin have an anthropomorphic dimension, and there is a raw, enigmatic quality to their irregular forms. A single drawing punctuates the sculptural presentation. The balcony on the first floor space, which Kläs has chosen to leave empty, gives another perspective on this concentrated encounter.

Kläs has been attentive to her inner experience as well as external reality, and her sculptures and works on paper appear at once as mysterious presences and projections of a poetic imagination. The new work exhibited in CHERE: Sculpture manifests an original way of perceiving and being in the world.

Esther Kläs was born in Mainz, Germany, in 1981. She lives and works in New York. Recent solo shows include Girare Con Te, Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Italy (2014), Esther Kläs: Better Energy, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2012) and You and the Dance with the Tortoise, Parkhaus, Düsseldorf, Germany (2009). Her work has also been included in a number of group exhibitions including Playing by Heart, KOLUMBA, Kunstmuseum des Erzbistums Köln, Cologne, Germany (2014), KölnSkulptur #7, Stiftung Skulpturenpark Cologne, Cologne, Germany (2013) and the sixth edition of the Prague Biennale, Flow, Prague, Czech Republic (2013).