Untitled

Materials

Ceramic and varnish; 43.00 × 30.00 × 24.00 cm

Dating

2014

About the artwork

For a long time, the human figure was the main subject of sculpture until the 20th century, when questions of materiality and the relationship to space came to the fore. Sara Masüger combines both aspects in her objects in a sometimes disturbing way and creates haunting symbols of physical memory and transience.

About the artist

Sara Masüger studied fine arts at the Schule für Gestaltung Bern from 1997 to 2000 and then at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam from 2001 to 2003. At the beginning she worked in installations and drawings, sometimes with text, occasionally also with video – for example for the work Er war ein guter Baum (He was a good tree) from 2003, which was commissioned by Mobiliar. In addition to the relationship between man and nature, proportions play an important role here, which are also significant in her work, which soon became primarily installation-sculptural. Masüger developed her genuine sculptural language around 2010, when fragments of body parts increasingly found their way into her objects. At an exhibition for the Guerilla Gallery in St. Gallen in 2011, these were still plaster casts of filled rubber gloves, but Masüger soon moved on to using her own body as a model. Since then, hands or parts of the head in particular have repeatedly combined in her work with material growths made of epoxy, tin or rubber to create surrealistically fantastic, sometimes apocalyptic and latently morbid-looking objects, which the artist produces herself. Always kept in black or white, they convey the impression of transience as well as the body’s own capacity for sensation and memory. Masüger has also built several strongly tapering tunnel constructions – white and lined like stalactite caves in Zug in 2014, for example, or shining in mirror black in the Kunstmuseum Chur in 2018. This “perspective building” creates a play with dimensions and a three-dimensional illusionary space.

Sara Masüger is considered one of the most promising Swiss sculptors of the younger generation. She has already received several awards, for example in 2004 and 2006 with a grant from the Canton of Zug or in 2015 with a Cahier d’artistes from the Pro Helvetia Cultural Foundation.