Image: Pace Gallery, New York
Pace is presenting 'Exquisite Corpse' as an exhibition curated by Loie Hollowell in response to her appreciation of the influential Austro-American artist Kiki Kogelnik. The exhibition brings together works by Kogelnik, Hollowell, Sascha Braunig, and Veronika Pausova.
The title refers to a collaborative parlor game invented by Surrealist artists in 1925, in which players take turns writing words or drawing sections of a body on a folded sheet of paper while concealing their contributions from the next participant. Hollowell uses the concept as a model for the ways artists inspire and influence one another across time and distance.
The paintings, works on paper, and sculptures focus on the body, particularly the female body, treating the figure not as a stable subject but as a site of tension that can be stretched, flattened, cut up, and transformed. The works also engage with the body as a machine and modular system shaped by technology, labor, and scientific developments.
Feminism and the question of what it means to make a feminist image are central to the exhibition, although the artists differ in their relationship to the label: Kogelnik resisted it, while the three contemporary artists embrace it. Hollowell was particularly influenced by Kogelnik's combination of the body and the machine as a basis for feminist critique.
Braunig began using silhouettes and cutouts in her practice after discovering Kogelnik's work. The presentation includes Braunig's 'Possession' (2024), an oil-on-linen-over-panel work.
