Saskia Noor van Imhoff at the GRIMM Gallery New York

Thu, Oct 17 - Sat, Jan 4  2020

GRIMM New York

#+40.00 will be the first solo exhibition of Saskia Noor van Imhoff (b. 1982, Mission, CA) in New York.

Zooming in and out, resizing, translating and unfolding: this is only a short list of formal systems and associations which Saksia Noor van Imhoff applies to existing artworks and artifacts. Allocating them a new place in her installations composed of sculptures, found objects and photographs, which are gathered online and culled from archives documenting previous exhibitions. The resulting individual works, assemblages and environments subsequently form new ‘constellations’ or self-referencing systems.

Central to Van Imhoff’s artistic practice are the elements one usually associates with hidden and obfuscated practices of categorization and classification. What happens to the meaning or reading of an object through constantly changing situations? How do these different contexts relate to one other? Van Imhoff breaks with the existing or anticipated hierarchy, setting apart individual elements and providing them with renewed value and meaning.

For Van Imhoff’s first solo exhibition in New York, the floor is covered from wall to wall in salt. Clusters of plaster sculptures, objects and neon lines seem to be scattered around the salt surface, in order to slow down their inevitable process of decay. The neon lines are sketched in the space as liquid light frozen in time, melted over and through the different artifacts. Like constellations hardened under sheets of ice they seem to be indefinitely contained in their current state. However, salt is a material impervious to one single meaning in that it both conserves and degenerates. While it is used to preserve, it also erodes landscapes and can eat its way through seemingly impenetrable plates of steel.

The installation #+40.00 dissolves preconceived boundaries of an exhibition; the viewer and the gallery environment form an integral part of this work. The staircase is illuminated by radiating magenta bars of light- normally used to artificially accelerate the growth process of crops and plants, which inscribe an afterimage onto the viewer’s gaze. After descending the stairs and stepping into the salt-filled space, and integral green filter colorizes the viewer’s sight.

Within the gallery space, a transparent Donald Judd Corner Bench replica, that is redefined as both a sculpture and a vitrine, revisits the semiosis of abstract and functional forms. The demarcation between artistic and functional is further blurred by the entanglement of the different humidification processes active in the space, endlessly balancing each other out.

The negative spaces created by the plaster objects bear a faint resemblance to human heads, limbs and bodies. The fragments recall both fossilized organic material and the eroded images of classical sculpture. Their worn shapes and curves are delineated by the neon lines in the space, offering a point of departure for new readings. Van Imhoff’s installations negate any fixed perspective, they present ambiguous associations and inspire seemingly contradictory understandings.

About the artist

Saskia Noor van Imhoff lives and works in Amsterdam. She received her BA in Fine Art from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (NL) in 2008. In 2012, she graduated from De Ateliers, Amsterdam and also attended Kunsterlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (DE) in 2014. Van Imhoff was awarded the ABN Amro Art Priza in 2017, the same year she was nominated for the Prix de Rome. In 2012 she received the Walter Tielmann Prize for Book Design and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Prize in 2008.

About the gallery

GRIMM represents 30 international artists. Since its establishment in 2005, it has been the gallery’s mission to represent and support the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The 300 square meter main gallery space is located near Amsterdam’s museum square. In 2016, GRIMM opened a second gallery space on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, offering both artists and visitors a new exhibition space in a classic canal house. In 2017 the gallery opened a third venue, a large exhibition space across two floors in the Lower East Side of Manhatten, New York City.