Join us for a very special summer evening at Studio Voltaire, featuring a private view of Caspar Heinemann’s new exhibition, followed by an intimate studio presentation by artist Rene Matić. The evening will conclude with a cocktail reception in the garden.
Caspar Heinemann
This exhibition marks the first solo institutional show in the UK for Caspar Heinemann (b. 1994, London).
Playing with transformation and scale, Heinemann’s exhibition will include miniaturised, diorama-like assemblages alongside a major site-specific installation, suspending a series of sculptures from the ceiling to upend the audience’s viewpoint. The show follows a production residency at Studio Voltaire, during which Heinemann will further his explorations of the politics of land, folk revival and spiritual histories.
The unifying concept for this new body of work is the word sod. The term has multivalent applications, variously meaning the ground, the soil itself, or a person’s native ground. It can also refer to an unfortunate man, a gay man, a lucky man; used to express something difficult, or feelings of anger. In Biblical Hebrew, sod is an untranslatable word, often interpreted as ‘secret’, but also as meaning a council or circle, and the highest level of mystical interpretation.
Heinemann’s exhibition will take this complex root as a point of departure, employing an alchemical approach to making in order to process issues of separation and deterrence. The artist tests these ideas in relation to archetypal thresholds, evoking dualities such as the elemental boundaries between earth, sky, and water, or life and death. Drawing from the aesthetics of folk art and vernacular architecture, Heinemann explores the interconnectivity of spiritual, political and sexual countercultures.
Rene Matić
Following the exhibition, artist, writer, and poet Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough) will present their work, which intertwines themes of post-blackness, glitch feminism, and subcultural theory. Matić’s practice draws from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone, using these cultural touchstones to explore and re-imagine the intimate connections between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain. Their presentation will explore the concept of "rude(ness)" - a space where boundaries are interrupted and redefined.