Iris Musolf: Berry me!

IRIS MUSOLF
Berry me!
July 11 – 31, 2015
Galerie Gilla Lörcher | Contemporary Art Summer Hours in July: Thu-Sat 1-6 PM

Galerie Gilla Lörcher is pleased to present “Berry me!”, the third solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist IRIS MUSOLF (born 1980).

For this exhibition, Iris Musolf has selected a small concrete object that evokes unsettling associations with the Venus of Willendorf, along with 14 monochromatic paintings from her series “Gloss.” The artist, who occasionally incorporates makeup materials into her work, has drawn from the color palette of a lip gloss brand and its onomatopoeic names for the Gloss series. The titles of the works, which include indulgent, innocent, passionate, etc., read like a lexicon of supposedly feminine traits.

Curator Jean-Christophe Ammann wrote about the 2014 Gloss series: “When Iris Musolf uses lip gloss extensively, she systematically conceals, beautifies, and adds shine. (...) It is the illusion that breaks apart. This is an old theme, but precisely for that reason, it is presented to us today with a brutal clarity. The works have a political and socially critical background without falling into the trap of worn-out terms. The collective vehemently intersects with the individual, and the individual with the collective.” (Excerpt from text for the exhibition Limbo & Paradise, Frankfurt, 2015)

Iris Musolf was born in 1980 in Hannover. She lives and works in Berlin. The artist studied from 2002 to 2009 at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig under Bogomir Ecker and Candice Breitz (Master student) and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the same institution. In 2005, she received the Erasmus Scholarship for Fine Arts (Nice, France), in 2008 the Intensive Program AKI/ArtEZ Scholarship, Enschede (Netherlands), and was nominated for the Karl Schmitt-Rottluff Scholarship in 2011, the Young Academy of Fine Arts Scholarship in 2012, and the Sprengel Prize in 2014.

Her works have been presented in numerous galleries and institutions both nationally and internationally, including (selection): Kunstverein Mannheim, Städtische Galerie (Viersen); Neue Galerie Landshut; Goethe Institute (New York City, USA); Konsumverein Braunschweig; International Video Art Festival (Amsterdam and Starnmeer, Netherlands); Biennale für Junge Kunst Moscow (Tsaritsino Museum Moscow, Russia); Biennale Mulhouse (France); Art Labor Gallery (Shanghai, China); Galerie Anita Beckers (Frankfurt a.M.); Galerie Perpetuel (Frankfurt a.M.); Galerie Manzara (Istanbul, Turkey); and Galerie Gilla Lörcher | Contemporary Art (Berlin).