Julie Sass: IMAGE: temporary constellation

September 2-October 2, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, September 2, 6-8pm, Fiendish Plots

Open Saturdays and Sunday 1-4pm, or by appointment

For Julie Sass the image is fleeting and always in flux. Her process is a movement from one image to another, often centered around several versions of the same image, each building on the previous and suggesting the next as a pendulation between question and answer. What if? The works are always multi-layered with her characteristic marks that fluctuate between the real and imagined; where shapes emerge as things with textures, we think we recognize but don’t really.

As a parallel, the images in IMAGE: temporary constellation by Julie Sass move seamlessly between the multitude of mediums of Sass’ practice, including works on fabric, prints, paintings, drawings, artist book, and a site-specific mural. Collectively the displayed images – which are mainly new works made for the space – constitute one body of work, a site-specific scenography, which is embedded in and embraces the space.

The exhibition can also be viewed as a physical manifestation of the artist book by the same title from 2022 – a series of texts by writers and thinkers responding to artworks by Sass.

To take the term literally, a constellation is far superior to a universe because it foregrounds ‘we’, not as a whole or singular as a star, but as a visual commons. In this sense, this publication’s works and written contributions form a temporary constellation, which is to say, a momentary ‘we’ around the artist.

– Hugo Hopping, editor, Really Simple Syndication Press

The writers all represent geographical imprints of places Sass has been, which have all shaped and pushed her way of seeing and working. Having completed part of her studies in New York, the American abstract tradition and artistic environment have greatly influenced her practice, which she has further developed in her native Scandinavian context, but also embedded within a broader cultural perspective, spanning from Japanese woodcuts, pre-Columbian artifacts, to the color of the roof the local shop. Sass does not view different times, disciplines, and styles as separate, but rather incorporates their mutual forms and dialogues in her works, although the traces of these influences may not always be obvious when looking at her works.

Spanning back to when Sass lived in the US and the idea for the exhibition first occurred, the exhibition itself springs from a dialogue which has been ongoing for more than two decades.

Julie Sass studied visual art at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at New York University (MFA), where she specialized in painting. Later she received her MA in Theory and Mediation from The Royal Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts. Focusing on Abstraction in its diverse forms and how visual art can be embedded in various contexts, Sass has curated several exhibitions and published books connected to these exhibits, including her artist books. Her work can be found in public and private collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and it has been supported by the New Carlsberg Foundation. In 2020 she was nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award.

FIENDISH PLOTS

FIENDISH PLOTS