ELISA MANIG – SCHWEBEN, STÜRZEN, FLIEGEN

With the solo exhibition schweben, stürzen, fliegen starting on March 25, Jarmuschek + Partner presents installative objects and drawings by Elisa Manig for the first time. The Hamburg-based artist puts us in an intense state of physical and sensual engagement. Like in a whirl, we as viewers try to orient ourselves and to fathom the relationship of her works to the surrounding space, but again and again we encounter irritations and supposedly impossible constellations in which weight, gravity, tension and dynamics seem to follow new laws. With a reduced formal language and often cheerful, light colours, the artist processes elements from our everyday world.

Also in her drawings, Elisa Manig negotiates spatial dimensions and creates an astonishing trial of strength in the field of tension between optically light and weighty colours. Still in the process of perception, fitting shapes join together in the mind or individual elements tangibly repel each other in a mysterious way. One line is drawn, another seems to be stuck in place. An object drawn with a few strokes threatens to topple off the paper.

In her works, Elisa Manig plays not only with our visual experience but also with our fundamental understanding of how our physical world works. With disturbing ease, she questions our intuitive ability to react, exposes our very own human impulses and protective instincts and takes them ad absurdum. By undermining our ability to assess our environment, she is able to unsettle us: What do we really see here? Can we trust our perception? And do we have to take action ourselves so that everything doesn't fall into pieces in the next moment?

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Elisa Manig was born in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz today) in 1987. She trained as a goldsmith until 2011 and then began studying fine arts at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel, which she continued in 2014 and at the HfBK Dresden, graduating in 2018 as a master student of Monika Brandmeier. In the same year, she received the Saxon State Scholarship. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including the Hygiene Museum and the Kunstverein Meißen. At POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair 2020, Elisa Manig presented her works as part of the curated special exhibition Academy POSITIONS by Berlin Hyp and was awarded with the Berlin Hyp art prize. As the winner, she was represented last year with a solo exhibition at the POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair.