Siegfried Contemporary is pleased to present Fantasia a contemporary sculptural exhibition with works by Caroline Achaintre, Christine Roland and Jonathan Trayte.
Fantasia brings together three artists working in different crafts. They take us to an imaginary universe of tropical vegetation, mystical creatures, hybrid bodies, and luring entities. Some of them express their artistic vision with the desire for the playful, the strange and the supernatural. Others use form and strange natural shapes to achieve their vision. Using a wide range of materials, methods and processes their works investigates textures, forms, surfaces as well as light and colours.
Born in Toulouse in 1969, Caroline Achaintre lives and works in London. Her point of departure often starts with the uncanny and the monstrous as a form of expression of psychic states. Working with a large variety of materials such as wool, ceramic, and watercolour, Achaintre often combines different motifs with one another, for example an animal with a human face, creating hybrid looking creatures. Her works has been part of numerous international exhibitions includind Tate Britain, Castello di Rivoli, Belvedere Museum, Baltic Center for Contemporary Art.
Christine Roland is a Danish Berlin-based ceramicist, creating unique handmade works of stoneware and porcelain. All her works are made by hand, imprinting each piece with a strong trace of her identity, without using traditional moulds. Having a background in tailoring allows her to shape her ceramics in a particular and unique way that explores the limit of materiality and gives a sense of infinity. For this project Roland worked closely with the botanical designer Mary Lennox to install succulents and cactus plants, some of which are more than fifty years old, within her stoneware vases. The strong contrasts and individual forms of each plant married to the ceramics renders an inventory of striking yet simple beauty. Christine Roland has had a number of international exhibitions, her most recent at Tanya Leighton gallery, Berlin (2019).
Jonathan Trayte is an English artist based in London, who paints bronze sculptures and aluminium cut-outs that resemble food, confectionery, and natural forms. His approach is largely informed by the vocabulary of colour used in food display and packaging in order to manipulate consumer decision making. His work explores the psychology of desire by using a wide range of materials and a saccharine touch of colours. Trayte’s work has been included in numerous international exhibitions including Whitechapel gallery, London.
