Volumen: Press release

 

Location
Super Super Markt, Brunnenstr. 22, Berlin

Dates
September 10 – October 18, 2026

 

An Encounter in Volume

 

In time something intrinsically feminine emerged.
Linen stretched tight, taught as a drum,
Revealing an internal energy, a lyricism, a song of an inherited knowing.
Bearer of sound and sun, that potent potential from which we derive
Bones protruding, curving, carving out the thing we call
Yours, mine. 

This active force which binds, holds, makes room for the cavity.
To arrive in longing, or be seen for the first time
Like breath inside lung, fluid within womb,
The volume of the heart, the weight of the soul.
For what is a dream –

To come into this world in twos is to search for ones’ illogical sign
Unintentionally, but somehow divinely.
Some surfaces hold a poetic truth, like the skin of a persimmon ripe on the vine after snow fall,
Or the aged copper kettle made green with time.
A truth. Succinct as breath, immediate as now,
Of the instant.

Form made bountiful, with the voluptuous endowment of nature.
Curving in on the edge, lifting eyes in fluttering arabesque.
But first the spirit of the moment, the gesture, the countenance,
The shadow, even yet
The silence.

 

“Like an inner sound forming a score of signs… that speak of painting’s non-visible side, the internal essence overcoming the external,” Germano Celant, “Behind the Picture: Enrico Castellani,” in Enrico Castellani: 1958-1970, Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2001, p. 14.

 

Volumen serves as a sequel and extension of my exploration in painting as volume. This show contends with the relationship between surface and form as the conventional rectilinear painting surface is transfigured into curvilinear wall-bound sculpture. Paint mingles with metal leaf to capture the frenetic energy of light as it bounces, casts shadows and illuminates the varied surfaces of the volumetric forms. Volumen is an exhibition which hinges on the meditative nature of viewing. How we sit in a work, assume our reflection and bear witness to the passage of time. 

– Adrienne Maki