For the second year in row, Palazzo Tullio-Altan hosts the solo exhibition of the winner of the last edition of the In Sesto Prize. The German artist Hella Gerlach won in 2021 with the sculpture project Le Gambe di Tagliamento designed for the former town’s Foro Boario, which has now been redeveloped into a public garden. The sculpture consists of two tangled legs at child’s height, and alludes to social interaction as the catalyst for the growth and development of unexpected ideas.
Palazzo Tullio-Altan displays a selection of Gerlach’s works entitled hangover, properly numbered within a longer, constantly evolving series of thirty-seven pieces. The last one - hangover #37 - is being exhibited for the first time in San Vito Al Tagliamento. Gerlach's works consist of flexible tubular forms differently padded and properly combined together as a setting hanging from the roof. With their anthropomorphic character and the sensuous tactile dimension of their surfaces and the different colors, these creations are an attempt to give substance to inner emotional states. Motorized or moving slightly, they are genuine ‘performative sculptures' producing sounds or emanating scents; these artworks invite the visitors to interact with them. The dialectic relationship between the works and their surrounding space, between one work and the other, as well as between artwork and visitor is indeed a focus for the artist.
Hella Gerlach’s aesthetic research develops around existing relations between architectonic, physical and social bodies. The body theme is one of the leitmotiv in Gerlach’s artistic production, among which the works here on display are a suggestive sample, as both places of landing and relaunch.
Hella Gerlach (Gummersbach, 1977) lives and works in Berlin. She studied experimental sculpture at the Düsseldorf’s Kunstakademie, history of art at the University of Cologne and integrated design at the International School of Design in Cologne. She held several solo and collective exhibitions both Germany and abroad, such as at Galleria Acappella (Naples), Stations (Berlin), Roemer-und Pelizaeus-Museum (Hildesheim), Goethe- Institut Glasgow (Scotland), Museum Schloss (Schwerin), Kunstverein (Hamburg), Mark Morgan Perez Garage (Buenos Aires) and Garden City Club (Cairo).
