Sandra Munzel: Small Saints
Matthew Barney: Prints from Cremaster Cycle 3 and 5
and Nissin Maru (Drawing Restraint 9)
21st of January until 5th of March, 2011
Opening Reception: 21st of January, 2011, 7 pm

Cain Schulte Contemporary Art Berlin starts the new Year showing photoengravings and etchings by Matthew Barney as well as sculptures and
drawings by Sandra Munzel. Barney and Munzel both deal with the afflictions of the human body – Barney in a visually staged vehemence and Munzel by cautiously
sketching our fantasies. An opening reception will be held on January, 21st, 2011 at 7 pm, Sandra Munzel will be present.

These are not fairy tale characters with shiny surfaces, the created forms are too
irritating and too eccentric. More likely, they rise out the mythological shere: with horns, fur on their legs, multiple breats, creatures devoured by themselves...

It is exacly this going beyond into the grotesque that clears the way for unchecked permissiveness and love of life – both totally embodied in Munzel’s figurines...
--Udo Kittelmann Horror vacui or: From the Beginnings
(Exhibition catalog: Sandra Munzel Hidden Pieces)

The unashamed nakedness in which Munzel presents her figurines can, at first,
irritate the viewer. The small creatures – many not taller than six inches – are fusions of humans and animals or strangely mutated human beings with only rudimentary developed limbs. Some of the „Little Saints“ are dislocated into a floating position. The delicate colors, fascinating surfaces and their serene gaze, contradict the fantasmagoric parahumans and create a memorable impression.

Munzel´s sculptures are allegories of the unconsciousness we meet in our dreams, bringing the unspoken and hidden the the surface.

The bodies of the little saints talk of fragility and pain without moaning. The upwards glancing faces seem to be in a state of happiness – calm, peaceful, dreamy and bonded to something supernatural. This dialectic connects mythology and poetry, fiction and reality to sculptural images, making Munzel’s creations distinctively unique and welcoming the viewer to a whole new experience.

Sandra Munzel was born in Peine, Lower Saxony, in 1968. She studied Art at the
University of Art in Braunschweig, (HBK). She won numerous scholarships and
taught at the HBK Braunschweig from 2001 until 2007.

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Munzel´s work is accompanied by selected prints of Matthew Barney. Nisshin Maru, a series of eight photogravures (created during Drawing Restraint 9, 2005), five etchings from the Cremaster Cycle/Field Suite of 2002 and 2 prints from Cremaster 5 and 3.

Barney analyzes the subject of physical transcendency with the pschylogical and
emotional threshold of the human body constituting a vital element in his work.

Matthew Barney, born in San Francisco in 1967, connects sculptural environments, installation and drawing with performance and video art. Among his most famous works is the Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002), a five part non chronological art film. Barney’s work is represented in leading public and private collections worldwide including: MoMA, New York; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York and Tate, London.