Artist Statement

Works primarily with sculpture, but also with text, video, and sound – used in parallel and in contrast to each other. I research how to harmonize concept and material by putting associations in a new frame of references. Preoccupied with history versus topicality, to connect connections from the past to contemporary issues and questions.

It about creating a space, a mood, where the elements can be allowed to speak together – ranging from paganism, satanism, occultism, splatter, folklore, traditions, art history, prehistoric art to intersectional feminism, racism, capitalism, consumerism, ecology, conspiracy theories, landscapes, patterns, and systems. Heavy and lots of references and stories that are combined with the material, thereby “composing the composition” with symbols, motifs, textures, and colors – where you work with the material both as classic sculpture work, but also experimenting with salt dough, wax, and rope. The material is like an extra layer that encapsulates the works’s references, leaving it as a fused constellation that almost makes its own newly created iconography and carries its own symbolism in a newer frame. A kind of overload, materialism and cultures mingling, exactly as a reflection of society.

My practice is research based, archive, literature, the internet, sketches, notes, etc. In my process, there is a distinction between source material, where it comes from, credibility and a permit for everything can be archive material regardless. For me, and for our contemporaries, we get information from various sources, and I take it directly into my way of working. That’s why I use both sources from local historical archives and non-fiction, but also SoMe platforms like TikTok and Pinterest – which all carries their very own phenomena and realities.

Strives for a certain recognizability in the works, which should be inclusive for the viewer and to reach as broadly as possible. A quest to demystify, with an awareness of the process can be exclusive, whereas the dissemination of this must be able to be inclusive – the viewer must be able to have an immediate approach to the work. My works are a distorted reality of familiar objects, tools, and trends in addition humor plays a significant role, as well as kitch and pop aesthetics to the complex reference ensemble.

- Sabine Wedege

Sabine Wedege’s interdisciplinary practice moves between sculpture, text, video, and sound, used in parallel and in contrast with each other. Drawing from a variety of references, including esoterism, environmental issues and iconography, her works morph from connections between often very disparate issues found in (art) history and in our present world. Inspired by narratives as diverse as Land Art and Constructivism, prehistoric art and Yugoslav darkwave, her practice takes unexpected detours. From geoglyphs to synthetic red blood in Grand Guignol theatre, from microplastic-filled fishes to dark rooms of neon graffiti and Israeli 90s punk, all the way to commercials, memes, and cannibalistic capitalism.

          Through her works, Wedege investigates the potential of material and concept to reconcile through wacky associations, freed from epistemological structures. Reading present issues through historical references, while playing with the idea that formal elements can take shape through a variety of cultural references, the artist exacerbates contemporary tendencies of cutting and pasting disparate sources to create a pastiche of juxtapositions. This approach resists the concept of ‘finished form’ and instead operates experimentally and cyclically, welcoming repetitions and transformations. The task of demystifying this idiosyncratic approach of incorporating research is entrusted to a certain recognizability of form that allows the viewer to intuitively approach the works beyond the complexity of their references.

- South into North

(Francesca Astesani & Julia Rodrigues)