Various Others 2023 at Sperling

Artists: Kinke Kooi, Anna McCarthy, Monique Mouton

Exhibition title: Various Others 2023

In cooperation with: Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf & VEDA, Florence

Venue: Sperling, Munich, Germany

Date: September 9 – October 14, 2023

Photography: ©the artist. Courtesy of SPERLING, Munich. Photos by Sebastian Kissel

Monique Mouton (*1984, Fort Collins, Colorado; lives and works in New York) positions her practice by posing a quiet resistance to received categories and hierarchies within art. With painting being the fulcrum from which her work extends, the methods and materials she uses breach the territories of drawing and sculpture as well. This investment in querying the parameters of painting extends to considering the interplay between the works and their display, including how framing, architecture, and arrangement are all contingencies that affect the experience of the work. Conversely, the work itself alters the structures it appears in, and each show is simply one iteration of the possible dynamics of a given group of objects.

Kinke Kooi (*1961 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, lives and works in Arnhem, Netherlands) uses her art to circle around the idea of the inclusive and exclusive. Often dealing with the subtleties of language and examining them in a poetic and sometimes humorous way for gender-specific characteristics, Kooi demonstrates a particular flair for fine, elaborate drawings that are captivating in their richness of detail. They are distinguished, for example, by the use of flowers, vines, and tentacles that slowly evolve around sentences or objects like beads. These draped, dreamy collages often contrast with the clear positions they take. Kinke Kooi draws intricate interior worlds in which she verbalizes ideas and surrounds them with objects that are charged with meaning by the artist and play throughout her work. Many of the thoughts revolve around the role of the artist in the art world and her position as a woman in an overall social context. They are intimate and at the same time universal statements.

Anna McCarthy’s (*1981, lives and works in Munich) constantly seeks new forms to express topics that have collective relevancy as well as personal urgency. Her work is quick and dirty. Improvised and raw, charged with personal experience as a reflection of wider topics. Her sharp observation and wit challenge the status quo, always laughing, together with the viewer, in the face of fear. Her methods of production mirror the content – cheap materials, reusables, always in flux. She possesses a talent to astutely comment on societal ongoings whilst refraining from preaching, subtly dismantling power constructs as she goes. Her work is a modern-day amalgam of multilayered readings that take the viewer into a narration that weaves in and out of thought patterns in those similar to one’s own.

Various Others, 2023, exhibition view, Sperling, Munich

Anna McCarthy, Untitled, 2023, glazed ceramic 52×27×8cm, Courtesy the artist and Sperling, Munich

Monique Mouton, 2545, 2022, Soft pastel, watercolor on paper, silk/polyester, mahagony frame, 102×223×7cm, Courtesy the artist and VEDA, Florence

Various Others, 2023, exhibition view, Sperling, Munich

Kinke Kooi, Hospitality, 2016, watercolor on paper, pencil, fineliner, gouache, collage on paper, tryptich, each 152 × 100 cm, Courtesy the artist and Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Kinke Kooi, Visit, 2023, watercolor, pencil, fineliner, gouache on paper 22×23.5cm, Courtesy the artist and Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Various Others, 2023, exhibition view, Sperling, Munich

Kinke Kooi, Visit, 2023, watercolor, pencil, fineliner, gouache on paper 22×23.5cm, Courtesy the artist and Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Anna McCarthy, Untitled, 2023, glazed ceramic 62×28×7cm, Courtesy the artist and Sperling, Munich

Monique Mouton, 2545, 2022, Soft pastel, watercolor on paper, silk/polyester, mahagony frame, 102×223×7cm, Courtesy the artist and VEDA, Florence

Various Others, 2023, exhibition view, Sperling, Munich

Kinke Kooi, Hospitality, 2016, watercolor on paper, pencil, fineliner, gouache, collage on paper, tryptich, each 152 × 100 cm, Courtesy the artist and Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Monique Mouton, Formation, 2022, watercolor, pencil on paper, silk, maple frame 202×166×7cm, Courtesy the artist and VEDA, Florence