↳ Exhibitions

Stefan Schwartzman at Lubov

April 1, 2019

Artist: Stefan Schwartzman

Exhibition title: Golem

Venue: Lubov, New York, US

Date: March 16 – April 28, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Lubov, New York

When you’re getting fucked in the ass you get an experience that is exposing. And there is the feeling of being impaled, of being split in half. And there is a splitting of personality. Or one could say a spitting of personality, into the asshole.

Here we witness the same obsessive body reconfiguring itself over and over again. Grafted shapes descended from solar dust mowing through the frame, separating the inorganic from organic. “Bodies are bags of shit and teeth,” said Stefan.

At first we are submerged in a wash of fragile greys and blues with splashes of red. It seems like the lines want to disappear but the faces and bodies linger nonetheless, smiling and wanting in pain. Wanting something and not having it, so much so that it becomes grotesque. Pagliacci watches from the rafters.

There is something fleshy about this world, maybe we are inside a body, or we are very small exploring a giant one. Or we are a very small giant. Are these figures all part of the same universe. What’s the opposite of a cinematic universe? The cinematic universe cannot and will not respond to any and every question you may have prepared. We asked the golem to answer in its own way.

The most tellurian of lifeforms, cloaked and grim. Humanoid figurines dance, they are of the golem family, and we travelled great distances to meet them.

—Ada O’Higgins and Alexander Iadarola

Stefan Schwartzman (b. 1991, US) lives and works in New York City.