EXHIBIT WILL BE POSTED ONLINE SOON!

Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk [coarse]

Preview link: https://coreyhelfordgallery.smugmug.com/Coarse

password: noop23

Corey Helford Gallery is thrilled to host award-winning, international renowned German artist duo Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk [coarse], in their new show, Because I Wanted You To Know.

Marking coarse’s debut at CHG, the show will feature limited-edition original pieces (sculpted in resin, wood, and other mixed media, with their signature sharp lines, smooth curves, and extreme attention to detail) each meticulously handmade over hundreds of hours in the artists’ studio based in Frogtown, Los Angeles.

For over 20 years, the artist duo collectively known as coarse has been carving new paths in the tradition of sculptural storytelling. By exploring cultural motifs and sculpting with an architectural precision, the artists embrace their German heritage; but simultaneously they rebel against it, painting with intense colors and employing a sense of levity even when examining heavy themes. coarse takes the melancholy and visual simplicity inherent to German art and fuses it with a sophisticated sense of irreverence, resulting in multi-faceted sculptures and a distinctively unique aesthetic. 

In Because I Wanted You To Know, the artists present a dinner party to which none of us were invited. As we arrive at the gallery, the evening has already reached its final course, a bombastically colorful climax of creams dripping down walls and translucent jellos. Each piece finds the characters in varying stages of paradise, from the euphoria of a new beginning to the sorrow of what will soon be over. As uninvited guests we witness the characters in moments when they think they are alone, allowing us to reflect on our own intimate memories, which belong to us and no one else.

Landwehr says, “In getting older, I’ve thought a lot about the fragility of life and how we think beautiful experiences will repeat themselves in the future, but more often than not they don’t. For this series I wanted to explore the disconnect between being in a perfect moment but simultaneously feeling as if it is already over. Because this is such a personal exhibition, most of the sculptures feature our most well-known character, noop, who is my self-portrait. The name noop is shortened form of ‘non-operational’ and hints at how we are all powerless to the way life carries us forward, oftentimes against our will.”

Through exhibitions around the world (including in Hong Kong, Seoul, Berlin, Tokyo, and Chicago) and collaborations with the likes of Warner Bros., Richard Mille for Pharrell Williams, DIESEL, Vans, and Ikea, coarse has earned international recognition. In 2015, their collaborative “Freedom Candles” art piece for Amnesty International earned them a Cannes Lion, and coarse’s representative art piece “The Passage” won three prizes at Designer Toy Awards 2014. Says Hyperbeast, “The workings of Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk…seemingly accomplish the impossible, as their raw, chiseled sculptures all but come to life in three-dimensional form.”