UNITED IN GRIEF

UNITED IN GRIEF is a spatial installation that reflects on the latent narrative potential of coping with loss in our hyper-capitalist world. Patrick Ostrowsky’s new works continue the formal implications of his earlier investigations into form and formlessness, industrial and organic structures, and textures of toxicity, which reappear in new experiments with ceramics. The firing process in the kiln creates an amalgamated composition from the formless, plastic clay, liquid glaze and plasmatic fire. In Speaking in Tongues (2022), wet tongues covered in craquelé glaze appear as stand-ins for each other. Pierced, rolled or hanging provocatively, they invite the viewer into a seductive game with their own bodies.

Individual groups of objects such as “Nymphaea” (2022) or “Spiky Hydra” (2022), consisting of seemingly scattered wood-steel furniture and puddles of epoxy resin, enliven the space. A cluster of ceramics oscillating between anthropomorphic and animal-like inhabit the scene. They rest on the DIY displays, swim in the damp-looking puddles or comfortably bed down on small piles of wood flour. They refer to an artificial nature and create webs between beauty and transience. It is a quiet situation in which these creatures exist. They take their time and demand the same from the viewer.

A lemon tree appears between the floral creatures as a conscious break with this dream-like world. A living creature as an independent, non-human actor. Dependent on daylight, it sovereignly demands it and thus creates an intentional break with the previous, darkened room situation of the artists’ galleys. At the same time, it satisfies the existential need of a living being for light and places the potential of ‘care’ at the centre of a collaborative practice. A collaboration between people and plants to jointly overcome a crisis.