Artist: Jens Kothe
Exhibition title: Model Organisms
Venue: Tara Downs, New York, US
Date: March 4 – April 9, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York
The study of heritable health effects marbles the human and inhuman, data gaps coupling in a relentless emulsion with our closest denominators. Some ordinate subordinates: Phi X 174 (Virus); Escherichia coli: (Bacteria); Dictyostelium discoideum (Amoeba); Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Yeast). Those caesurae in the taxonomy of the living, organisms at the edge of life, are an apparatus of lineal codes – little things replicating in big things – seething and stretching within their membranous limits. Packages of protein, and yet a familiar knot contracts in the vitals, knowing evolution is a tear-jerker, a squirming entanglement of recombinatory frailties.
Humans, we append annotations to the haunting refrains of our inheritance. In his first U.S. solo exhibition, the Düssseldorf-based artist Jens Kothe braids together the epigenetic influence of man-ifold 20th-century sculptural argots. One might number in this clade Robert Gober’s bodily traces as palimpsests of memory, Heidi Bucher’s shape-shifting milky architectonic molds, the errant threat of self-dissection that emanates from the spectre of early Tishan Hsu, Alina Szapocznikow’s erogenous metastasis of the domesticated self, or the biomorphic ouroboros of Frederick Kiesler’s “endless house” — a mutated lineage extruded into the meaty heuristic of Kothe’s speculative mor-phobiology and immunological ergonomics.
Whether clinging to the wall or freely-suspended, these objects churn codified binaries beyond expectation – visceral/epidermal, prosthetic/native, sensuous/aversive, primeval/plasticine – their sculptural logics minted from substances that would be at home at home: expanded foams, tufted velvet, a touch-up coat of eggshell acrylics, plain-woven canvas, joists of timber, the liniment-like glimmer of varnish, nails, the melodious note of soft-hewn pine. Under Kothe’s hand, they are massaged into the soft securities of a domestic milieu and the pliant, if evanescent, warped comforts of the not-quite flesh.
Implanted into animistic substrates plumping with blood, as well as oligocellular composites dribbling from the ceiling, lesions, whorls, and arcs strain against haptic expectations, canalize through carnal unities. Like an instrument that scans silently for itself with high precision until no longer found, biomechanical prototypes sensing but failing to unearth their own seamlessness, Kothe’s works appear as if harvested from design concepts that target the cusp of their own hard reset, reshaping ad infinitum into structures no one ever expected to exist.
Connoting an extension beyond the plush technics of hominization – the exteriorization of memory, liberation of a slew of our organs, some stab at a cryopolitics – Kothe’s sculptures intimate more than fragmentary automata shorn from the lab (cannibalizable, instrumentalizable as they come). While grifting a DNA heirloom or two from a cyborgian transubstantiation of the informe, they glint with the promise of a thing heaving with a juicier jouissance: tissue samples grafted from an imaginary of post-extinction.
Jens Kothe (b. 1985, Bochum, Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Selected exhibitions include: Philara Collection, Düsseldorf; Kunsthaus Essen; Kunsthalle Bochum; Museum Kunstpalast; Ruhrtriennale, Bochum; Efremidis Gallery, Berlin; Barb Urbain Gent; Museum Ostwall, Dortmunder U, Dortmund; Platform 6a, Otegem; Kunstverein Heppenheim; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden and Berthold Pott, Cologne. The artist earned his master’s degree under professor Andreas Gursky at the Academy Düsseldorf in 2011, from 2009-2011 he studied at the National Sculpture School in Oberammergau, and received his bachelor’s degree in Architecture at TU Dortmund in 2009. Model Organisms comprises the artist’s first U.S. solo exhibition.
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes, black oblong, 2021, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent, varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments 59 7/8 × 69 3/4 × 8 1/4 in / 152 × 177 × 21 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes, black oblong, 2021 (detail), Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent, varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments 59 7/8 × 69 3/4 × 8 1/4 in / 152 × 177 × 21 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes XX “tattooed”, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 27 1/2 × 28 3/8 × 5 7/8 in / 70 × 72 × 15 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes XX “tattooed”, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 27 1/2 × 28 3/8 × 5 7/8 in / 70 × 72 × 15 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, ceiling object I, 2021, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, silicone, plaster, epoxy, steel tube 37 1/8 × 32 1/4 × 12 5/8 in / 94 × 82 × 32 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, insertion I, 2021, Acrylic, plaster, plywood, transparent varnish, nails, staples, cushion, velvet, pine wood 52 × 45 1/5 × 8 in / 132 × 115 × 20 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, insertion I, 2021, Acrylic, plaster, plywood, transparent varnish, nails, staples, cushion, velvet, pine wood 52 × 45 1/5 × 8 in / 132 × 115 × 20 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes XXII, ornamental tryouts, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 45 1/4 × 60 1/4 × 6 1/4 in / 115 × 153 × 16 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes XXII, ornamental tryouts, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 45 1/4 × 60 1/4 × 6 1/4 in / 115 × 153 × 16 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed Membranes XIX, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 73 1/2 × 52 × 8 in / 187 × 132 × 18 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Left: Jens Kothe, insertion III, 2022, Cushion, canvas, wood construction, foam, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, velvet, pine wood 24 3/4 × 24 3/8 × 9 7/8 in / 63 × 62 × 25 cm. Right: Jens Kothe, ceiling object II, 2021, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, velvet, stretch foil, silicone, plaster, epoxy, steel tube, 39 × 54 3/4 × 11 3/4 in / 99 × 139 × 30 cm
Jens Kothe, insertion III, 2022, Cushion, canvas, wood construction, foam, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, velvet, pine wood 24 3/4 × 24 3/8 × 9 7/8 in / 63 × 62 × 25 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, insertion III, 2022, Cushion, canvas, wood construction, foam, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, velvet, pine wood 24 3/4 × 24 3/8 × 9 7/8 in / 63 × 62 × 25 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes, black square III, 2021, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments 68 7/8 × 68 7/8 × 7 1/2 in / 175 × 175 × 19 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, stressed membranes, black square III, 2021, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments 68 7/8 × 68 7/8 × 7 1/2 in / 175 × 175 × 19 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, insertion II, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 52 3/4 × 54 3/8 × 9 1/8 in / 134 × 138 × 23 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Jens Kothe, insertion II, 2022, Cushion, fabric, wood construction, transparent varnish, nails, staples, acrylic, pigments, velvet, pine wood 52 3/4 × 54 3/8 × 9 1/8 in / 134 × 138 × 23 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle
Exhibition view of Jens Kothe: Model Organisms, 2022, Tara Downs, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Tara Downs, New York. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle
