What did you sample during your last dinner party? Beef Wellington seared to perfection and wrapped in puff pastry? Maybe roasted Arctic char stuffed with rosemary and thyme? Or how about a green Jell-O mold topped with runny sauces, whipped cream, and strawberries for dessert?
If that last culinary concoction sounds tasty (or at least interesting), you’ll want to catch Because I Wanted You To Know, the latest solo show from renowned German artist duo Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk, collectively known as coarse. On view at Corey Helford Gallery through Nov. 11, 2023, Because I Wanted You To Know features limited edition original sculptures crafted from wood, resin, and gold leaf. Each piece is meticulously handmade over hundreds of hours in the artists’ Los Angeles studio.
In Because I Wanted You To Know, the artists throw a dinner party where all the guests are uninvited, and the main course is a questionable green confection drizzled with an unknown substance. Each piece finds the characters in varying stages of paradise, from the euphoria of a new beginning to the sorrow of what will soon be over. As uninvited guests, viewers witness the characters in moments of unguarded intimacy, prompting them to reflect on their own memories.
“In getting older, I’ve thought a lot about the fragility of life and how we think beautiful experiences will repeat themselves in the future,” says Mark on the idea behind the show. “But more often than not, they don’t. For this series, I wanted to explore the disconnect between being in a perfect moment but simultaneously feeling as if it is already over. Because this is such a personal exhibition, most of the sculptures feature our most well-known character, noop, who is my self-portrait. The name ‘noop’ is a shortened form of ‘non-operational’ and hints at how we are all powerless to the way life carries us forward, oftentimes against our will.”
Because I Wanted You To Know runs through Nov. 11, 2023, at Corey Helford Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. The exhibition runs alongside Kazuki Takamatsu’s solo show, Parallelization Era, in the Main Gallery. On view in Gallery 2, Literartistry: Art Inspired by the Written Word and three-artist exhibition Bound by Nature run through Nov. 11, 2023.
“I wanted to explore the disconnect between being in a perfect moment but simultaneously feeling as if it is already over.” — Mark Landwehr, coarse
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All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
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