vanessa german at Frieze Los Angeles

Santa Monica Airport, February 29 – March 3, 2024 
  • Booth E14

    Thursday Preview, February 29 | 10am – 7pm
    Friday Preview, March 1 | 11am – 7pm
    Saturday, March 2 | 11am – 7pm
    Sunday, March 3 | 11am – 6pm

    Santa Monica Airport
    3027 Airport Avenue
    Santa Monica, CA

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    Booth E14 Thursday Preview, February 29 | 10am – 7pm Friday Preview, March 1 | 11am – 7pm Saturday, March...
  • Kasmin is pleased to debut a new series of sculpture by American artist vanessa german (b. 1976) at Frieze Los Angeles, on view at Booth E14. This focused presentation will be the first to spotlight german’s developing use of rose quartz as a primary medium in her sculptural practice. In this body of work, which includes a dozen sculpted heads adorned with crystals alongside a larger assemblage figure, german draws on the material’s symbolic associations to powerfully invoke themes of love, healing, resistance, and redemption. Featuring works realized especially for Frieze Los Angeles, select artworks in this presentation will be accompanied by an audio component in the form of “prayers” recorded by the artist, accessible on site for visitors to experience.

    Rose quartz gives these sculptures their distinctive translucent pink color and light-reflective qualities. With documented use in ancient Mesopotamia through the present day, these crystals are representative of both the material nature of our existence—they are forms that emerge from the earth—as well as the unbounded nature of time and space, or the larger frequencies and spectrums on which our present lives exist. In line with german’s cultivation of ancestral wisdom, rose quartz is believed to encourage a reunification of body, mind, and spirit, offered as a salve in a society overwhelmed by a growing epidemic of loneliness and isolation. In these works, german creates intricate surface patterns with the rose quartz, occasionally integrating additional natural materials including pyrite, blue lapis, chalcedony, and strawberry quartz over sculpted and painted plaster.

    german’s works are spiritual activations and inquiries that embrace love as an original and infinite human technology, an ethos that the artist affirms as a vital way of being. Through her materials and imagery, german summons a transformation akin to the power of healing. This dimension of spirituality has defined the artist’s career for over a decade.

    german has previously utilized rose quartz in important works including Love Poem for Little Kim (2022, now in the permanent collection of the Akron Art Museum) and WALK IN BEAUTY: for journey into the wilderness of one’s own heart and Soul—into the deepest wilderness of being that resounds in intimate entanglement with all of nature and all of time—boots to get you to this most certain room of your heart. The latter, a pair of riding boots in unpolished quartz stones, was included in the artist’s 2022-23 installation MUSEUM OF EMANCIPATORY OBJECTS at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum—an emancipatory response to the collection of the nearby Skinner Museum, an early 20th-century cabinet of curiosities—and will be on view at Frieze Los Angeles.

    • vanessa german, DAMN., 2024
      vanessa german, DAMN., 2024
    • vanessa german, HOPE, 2024
      vanessa german, HOPE, 2024
    • vanessa german, JUICY, 2024
      vanessa german, JUICY, 2024
  • vanessa german The WEEPER, 2024 Wood, plaster, styrofoam, love, plaster gauze, strawberry quartz, chalcedony tears, gold glass beads, rose quartz,...
    vanessa german
    The WEEPER, 2024
    Wood, plaster, styrofoam, love, plaster gauze, strawberry quartz, chalcedony tears, gold glass beads, rose quartz, love, the strength to continue on.
    23 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches
    54.6 x 36.8 x 29.2 cm
  • vanessa german GRIEF AND LOVE AND GRIEF AND LOVE AT THE SAME TIME, 2024 Plaster, wood, plaster gauze, pigment, wood...
    vanessa german
    GRIEF AND LOVE AND GRIEF AND LOVE AT THE SAME TIME, 2024
    Plaster, wood, plaster gauze, pigment, wood glue, styrofoam, lapis, sodalite, kyanite, strawberry quartz, rose quartz, gold glass beads, blue glass beaded rhinestone trim.
    33 x 12 x 12 inches
    78.7 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
  • vanessa german 727 KNOTS: THE PINK DRESS, 2024 wood, plaster, cloth, candelabra, love spells beginning with the finding of the...
    vanessa german
    727 KNOTS: THE PINK DRESS, 2024
    wood, plaster, cloth, candelabra, love spells beginning with the finding of the world of the pink dress, rose quartz in its hand-fondled brilliance and protective capacities of deep truth, true love, soular-cellular bonds, PROTECTION from physical abuse at the hands of those who say they love you, protection from ordinary work-day liars, protection from self-abuse, protection from the luring of the material world, protection from the lies of capitalism and meanness, protection from emotionally paralyzed humans, protection from the confusion of the loud world, protection from greed, protection from the ruse that exhaustion is a form of brilliance, protection from the ideas that you own anyone anything at all ever that is not the true love of your own being -being, protection from projecting kindness and compassion where it does not reside, protection from disrespect, protection from emotional and spiritual coping mechanisms that blunt the living-loving technologies of being. And all of this being alive and giving and becoming moment by moment. 
    68 x 37 x 21 inches
    172.7 x 94 x 53.3 cm
  • vanessa german THE DREAMER, 2024 wood, plaster, gauze, chalcedony crystal tear, pyrite, glass beads, jade, from imagination into the heart...
    vanessa german
    THE DREAMER, 2024
    wood, plaster, gauze, chalcedony crystal tear, pyrite, glass beads, jade, from imagination into the heart of the living world, rose quartz as the holding of deep information, truth, loving, infinite creation, pineal gland activation. 
    25 x 11 1/2 x 12 inches
    58.4 x 29.2 x 30.5 cm
  • vanessa german ODE, 2024 son of jazz, son of bebop, son of blue grass, son of the grio, son of...
    vanessa german
    ODE, 2024
    son of jazz, son of bebop, son of blue grass, son of the grio, son of all of the invisible communication guides of the spirit: hip hop and all of its cousins: pyrite, antique Victorian mirror, neck chain, cosmic awareness, porcelain monkey band member, ceramic pipe holder with wild black face, wood, plaster, gauze, rhythm, joy, jade, rose quartz as human body, as beauty, as natural code, as crystallized faith, as truth, as wholeness: reflection is equanimity. (Against all the lies against you.)
    33 x 12 x 12 inches
    78.7 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
  • vanessa german HEART OVERHEAD, 2024 wood, plaster, plaster gauze, a living return to the presence of the human heart in...
    vanessa german
    HEART OVERHEAD, 2024
    wood, plaster, plaster gauze, a living return to the presence of the human heart in everyday movement, sorrow, grief, open joy, the meanness of feeling alone and not being alone, the meanness of feeling powerless in the face of great and gleeful destruction, teaching model of anatomical human heart, rose quartz as the loving power of the universe that has so thoughtfully formed the cells of our bodies and the natural reality to which we claim, for but a short time, home. Love, emotion, magic, a miracle.
    39 x 21 x 16 inches
    94 x 53.3 x 40.6 cm
  • vanessa german PINEAL GLAND, 2024 Holiness, wood, plaster, wood glue, plaster gauze, love, the human body as magical technology, Rose...
    vanessa german
    PINEAL GLAND, 2024
    Holiness, wood, plaster, wood glue, plaster gauze, love, the human body as magical technology, Rose quartz, pyrite, glass beads, jade.
    24 3/4 x 12 x 12 1/2 inches
    53.3 x 30.5 x 31.8 cm
    • vanessa german, NAP, or, NAPS, 2024
      vanessa german, NAP, or, NAPS, 2024
    • vanessa german, (talisman)/talisfemme of glee, 2023
      vanessa german, (talisman)/talisfemme of glee, 2023
    • vanessa german, spirit portrait of man suffocated to death by police at 44.9363° N, 93.2622° W, 2023
      vanessa german, spirit portrait of man suffocated to death by police at 44.9363° N, 93.2622° W, 2023
    • vanessa german, cup runneth, 2023
      vanessa german, cup runneth, 2023
    • vanessa german, COMPASSION: Spirit Portrait of Beautiful Human killed by police at 39° 44' 25.044'' N 104° 49' 26.76'' W, 2024
      vanessa german, COMPASSION: Spirit Portrait of Beautiful Human killed by police at 39° 44' 25.044'' N 104° 49' 26.76'' W, 2024
  • vanessa german THE FALLEN, 2024 wood, astroturf, loving memories, FLIES: jasper, pyrite and malachite, plaster, cats got your tongue, plaster...
    vanessa german
    THE FALLEN, 2024
    wood, astroturf, loving memories, FLIES: jasper, pyrite and malachite, plaster, cats got your tongue, plaster gauze, Victorian era bridal pin cushion as CROWN, pink jade, a beauty, a beauty, a beautiful thing, gold glass beads, Victorian pins, a full burning hearth of hope, loving.
    19 x 34 x 17 inches
    48.3 x 86.4 x 43.2 cm
  • vanessa german sorrow monster: the heart is open and the eyes leak, 2024 rose quartz, we are nature, jade, being...
    vanessa german
    sorrow monster: the heart is open and the eyes leak, 2024
    rose quartz, we are nature, jade, being is knowledge, pyrite, wood, plaster, wood glue, gauze, for how looking at the world sometimes calls on all the love in the universe
    21 3/4 x 12 x 10 1/2 inches
    45.7 x 30.5 x 26.7 cm
  • vanessa german THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS, or, THE GUN THAT TURNED ITSELF INTO A BIRD, 2024 Scale model of AK47, rose...
    vanessa german
    THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS, or, THE GUN THAT TURNED ITSELF INTO A BIRD, 2024
    Scale model of AK47, rose quartz
    11 x 34 3/4 x 2 inches
    27.9 x 88.3 x 5.1 cm
  • About the Artist

    vanessa german

    vanessa german

    Considered inextricable from her identity as an activist, vanessa german’s artistic practice includes sculpture, performance, communal rituals, and immersive installation. With a lineage in indigenous and West African folk practices, as well as the interdisciplinary Black Arts movement of the 1960s, german embraces alternative models for political and spiritual systems that counter those historically structured by racism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

    In 2024, german was named the inaugural Joyce Foundation Fellow at the University of Chicago, where she will open a solo exhibition in July this year. She has previously staged solo exhibitions at museums nationwide including The Contemporary Dayton (2023), Montclair Art Museum (2023), Mt. Holyoke College Art Museum (2022-23), and The Frick Pittsburgh (2021), among many others. She has participated in landmark group exhibitions including those at The National Mall, Washington, DC (2023) and Albright-Knox Northland, Buffalo, NY (2022).

    german has received numerous awards and accolades over the course of her career, including the Heinz Award for the Arts (2022), a Don Tyson Prize (2018), and a United States Artists grant (2018), among many others. Her work is held by major public institutions including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, among many others.

    german has been represented by Kasmin since 2021. Her first solo exhibition at Kasmin, Sad Rapper, was presented in New York in November 2022.

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