Grace and the Gold Collector

"Grace and the Gold Collector” brings together works by Emily Ridings and Kerstin Schaars to explore how contemporary artworks echo a false past. Conscious of the way the human mind tries to escape the present moment, Emily and Kerstin’s practices involve sustained, repetitive and rare labor. Concentrating upon hand-weaving as well as sewing with subtle hand-stitching, Emily’s talent lies in her ability to pivot technical expertise in cane and fabric to create objects with a sense of history, wherein the history lies in the nearly invisible detail. Kerstin introduces clay sculptures that slip the knotted presumption of functional, ceramic work. Handbuilt over a year and a half, these sculptures are hand-coiled, ripped, air-dried for weeks, fired, glazed and fired once more to achieve a weighted presence that is part-treasure, part-ruin.

The show’s title deliberately invokes the title of a folktale without a tale. Both artists use laborious processes that now feel rare: they make things with their hands. A folktale also feels rare. The special power of gathering people and sharing time without efficiency or perceived value has, as Walter Benjamin said of the storyteller, “become something remote from us and something that is getting even more distant.”* Benjamin also reminds us that storytelling “is itself an artisan form of communication,” one that took time and place during efficient work hours but was itself not of that time. Instead, the folktale is a prototype for present time, an experience of the present moment that serves no purpose outside of curiosity, contentment and enjoyment. This experience is Emily and Kerstin’s show, one that sinks into the life of the viewer, sustains one’s attention for a moment, and then stops.

A short film accompanies the show with an original score created and produced by Rush Falknor.

March 26 - April 22 2022 at Albertine Code gallery in Chicago, IL.
Gallery Hours: Sat-Sun 12-4.
Please email kerstin@albertinecode.com for gallery address.

*Walter Benjamin. “The Storyteller: Reflections of the Works of Nikolai Leskov.”