Valley of the Snake Ladies (009)

Andersen-s is proud to present the first solo-exhibition Valley of the Snake Ladies by the German artist Anselm Reyle. Anselm Reyle utilizes every format in creating his paintings, material pictures, sculptures, ready-made objects from everyday materials (lamps, vases, and a variety of articles from the non-domestic sphere), and his installations composed of combinations of these work elements. The viewer is upon first encounter reminded of the entire art-historical repertoire for inventing abstract images: the seductive machinery of the pop and poster art culture, as well as the good taste of modernism that has been domesticated into an everyday design and extolled in magazines (along with a clever lighting solution) as interior decorating. Addressing the commodification of culture, Reyle reclaims the cliché and the kitsch to create his own brand of authenticity, meeting the shifting aspects that lifestyle and art demand. Combining the romanticized systems of the old masters' guilds, and the irony of a pop culture assembly-line production, Reyle acts as manager to his large studio of assistants. This practice is also fabricated. Through his hands-off approach to creating, Reyle unites aesthetic concept with this impersonal process, creating objects of contemporary chic that encapsulate a modern day ethos of sublimity via manufactured perfection. In this way, topics that were believed to be done within the modernist age are currently being revisited in relation to the matters and associations of our time. Anselm Reyle is one of the most important young artists dealing with abstraction and formalism in this manner.