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2024

Heidi Horten Museum, Vienna, Austria (forthcoming)
PPC, Frankfurt, Germany (forthcoming)

06.08-08.10.2024

Skulptur Projekte Stockholm
Beau Travail
Stockholm, Sweden

05.23-07.27.2024

Our Porcelain Thoughts
DREI
Cologne, Germany

11.04-05.18.2024

Dark Glasses
Layr
Vienna

2023

15.12.2023 – 07.04.2024

Your and your vim
Aspen Art Museum
Colorado, USA

02.09.2023-07.01.2024

Good Year
MARTa Museum Herford
Herford, Germany

03.05-14.06.2023

Nature wills it
The Ranch
Montauk, New York

04.11-10.12.2022

Apple Red Cranberry House
Bortolami
New York

27.08-11.12.2022

Forest Through The Trees
Laumeier Sculpture Park
St. Louis, Missouri

2022

30.04-30.07.2022

Auf dem Asphalt botanisieren gehen
Klosterfelde Edition
Berlin

30.04-11.06.2022

Looking Through the Threshold
carlier gebauer
Berlin

17.02-28.10.2022

ALDO ROSSI’S SLEEPING ELEPHANT
Belvedere
Vienna, Austria

2021

26.10.2021–29.01.2022

Lives of an Object
ARCH
Athens, Greece

12.06.-17.10.2021

Lichtenfels Sculpture
Austria

28.04.-20.06.2021

I Think I Look More like the Chrysler Building
Vleeshal
Middelburg

27.03.2021-28.03.2021

Friend of a Friend
Warsaw
Poland

2020

09.12.2020-30.01.2021

Babysteps into Masochism
Emanuel Layr
Vienna, Austria

10.09.2020-07.11.2020

Fate of a cell / Η Τύχη ενός Κυττάρου
Martinos
Athens

19.09.2020-31.10.2020

Ice to Gas
Pedro Cera
Lisbon

11.09.2020-17.19.2020

Various Others
Sperling, München
Munich, Germany

09.11.2019-08.03.2020

R.M.M. Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY

09.11.2019-08.03.2020

L’homme qui marche
Kunsthalle Bielefeld
Bielefeld, Germany

2019

27.09.2019―26.01.2020

My Fetish Years
Museum für Gegenwartskunst
Siegen, Germany

11.01.―16.02.2019

Germanic Artifacts
Bortolami
New York, USA

2018

13.10.―22.12.2018

Positioner
Matthew Marks
Los Angeles, USA

15.05.―21.07.2018

THEMOVE
Emanuel Layr Gallery
Vienna, Austria

03.03.―13.05.2018

An Idea of Late German Sculpture; To The People Of New York, 2018
Kunsthalle Zürich
Zürich, Switzerland

09.03.―22.07.2018

Between The Waters
Whitney Museum of Art
New York, USA

17.03.―28.04.2018

Embrassade
Fons Welters
Amsterdam, Netherlands

2017

19.01.―08.04.2017

Year Of The Monkey
Galerie Emanuel Layr
Rome, Italy

28.04.―30.07.2017

SCHREI MICH NICHT AN, KRIEGER!
Schirn Kunsthalle
Frankfurt, Germany

09.04.―30.05.2017

Vertical Gardens
Antenna Space
Shanghai, China

03.06.―03.09.2017

Die Kommenden
Sprengel Museum
Hannover, Germany

14.09.―25.10.2017

in awe
Kunsthalle Exnergasse
Vienna, Austria

06.2017

Art Basel Parcours
Art Basel
Basel, Switzerland

2016

07.06.―11.09.2016

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
Kaufmann Repetto
Milan, Italy

28.01.―27.02.2016

RUN, RUN, RUNWAY
Golsa
Oslo, Norway

27.02.―26.03.2016

Heartbreak Highway
Real Fine Arts
New York, USA

17.06.―27.08.2016

My History of Flow
S.A.L.T.S.
Basel, Switzerland

04.07.―16.09.2016

fat center trash land 1―7, 2016
Small scale Sculpture triennial Fellbach
Fellbach, Germany

09.09.―05.11.2016

Fieber
Emanuel Layr Gallery
Wien, Austria

04.07.―16.09.2016

In Bed with M/L Artspace
9th Berlin Biennale
Berlin, Germany

03.12.2016―12.02.2017

Available Light
Kunstverein Braunschweig
Braunschweig, Germany

2015

2015

Surrounding Audience
The New Museum Triennial
New York, USA

09.2015

Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition
Queens
New York, USA

26.02.―04.04.2015

Looking at you (revived) again
Off Vendom
New York, USA

28-05.―16.05.2015

One step away from further Hell
Vilma Gold
London, UK

23.11.2015―08.01.2016

National Gallery 2―Empire Map
Chewday’s
London, UK

22.02.―05.04.2015

The problem today is not the other but the self
MINI/Goethe-Institut Ludlow 38
New York, USA

2014

09.05.2014-19.07.2014

Warm Math
Balice Hertling, New York
New York

05.2014

Frieze New York
Frieze Art Fair at Randall’s Island
New York, USA

02.05.―07.06.2014

Bloomington: Mall Of America
Bortolami Gallery
New York, USA

27.04.―01.06.2014

YES, I’M PREGNANT
Skulpturen museum Glaskasten
Marl, Germany

22.03.―17.05.2014

Geburt und Familie
White Flag Projects
Saint Louis, USA

08.―09.2014

Piracanga Freedom?
Two Hotel, Piracanga Beach
Bahia, Brazil

06.06.―14.08.2014

Chat Jet (Part 2), Sculpture in Reflection
Künstlerhaus KM
Austria

06.06.―03.08.2015

Revelry
Kunsthalle Bern
Bern, Switzerland

13.09.―18.10.2014

DIE
Parisa Kind
Frankfurt, Germany

2013

14.12.2013-08.02.2014

Soft Wear
Sandy Brown
Berlin

24.02.―21.04.2013

From One Artist To Another
Kunstverein Wiesbaden
Germany

13.09.―18.10.2013

On Thomas Bayrle
The Artist’s Institute
New York, USA

05.2013

The Doors
Skulpturenpark Köln
Köln, Germany

27.06.―09.08.2013

Freak Out
Greene Naftali Gallery
New York, USA

27.09.―09.11.2013

Love of Technology
Museum of Contemporary Art
North Miami, USA

2012

05.02.2012-22.04.2012

Hang Harder
Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
Aachen, Germany

12.2012

Lena Henke: First Faces, book launch at Karma Books, New York
Karma
New York, NY

13.01.2012-19.02.2012

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six sharpening my axe
Kunstraum Riehen
Basel, Switzerland

01.06.―29.07.2012

Core, Cut, Care
Oldenburger Kunstverein
Germany

14.09.―21.10.2012

H․ H․ Bennett, Lena Henke and Cars
1857
Oslo, Norway

2011

15.06.―07.08.2011

Andrei Koschmieder puts
Real Fine Arts
New York, NY

23.04.―18.06.2011

Schlangen im Stall, “snakes in the barn”
Galerie Parisa Kind Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

2010

05.2010

WIR UEBER UNS
Neue Alte Bruecke Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

08.2010

you have four eyes, (First ladies)
V 8
Karlsruhe, Germany

10.2010

Scandinavian blonde
Mousonturm
Frankfurt, Germany

28.11.2009 - 23.02.2010

Stone Temple Playground Collection
Kornhauschen Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg, Germany

28.11.2009 - 23.02.2010

Tokyo Hotel und deine Mutter
Literaturhaus
Frankfurt, Germany

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28.04.-20.06.2021
I Think I Look More like the Chrysler Building
Vleeshal
Middelburg
Text by: Julia Mullié





I think I look more like the Chrysler Building

“I am supposed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, but I think I look more like the Chrysler Building!” It is exclaimed by a somewhat disappointed Roger DeBris, the flamboyant character from Mel Brooks’ American comedy The Producers, who has dressed up and assesses his own costume. The title of this exhibition alludes to an important question: how does our body relate to urban space? The city shows similarities with the human body in function and characteristics. This relationship between city and body also manifests itself in our use of language. Consider for example the way we use words from the domain of architecture and city planning to describe social and personal matters, such as “team building”, “breaking through the glass ceiling”, or “the walls have ears”.

Architecture can enable us to position ourselves within the world and to define ourselves in relation to others. The artists in I Think I Look More like the Chrysler Building show that you can also reposition and redefine yourself by imagining a different architecture. This is necessary because architecture and urban planning in the West are often all too one-sidedly based on the idea of creating a Utopia. The proposed solutions and grids may be ideal in theory, but are often detached from the subjective experience of everyday life. By manipulating their environment—or the other way around; by complying with it—the artists in this exhibition explore ways to relate to their surroundings in a more personal way.

The word “space” alone already contains a paradox: on the one hand it refers to demarcation, on the other hand to the infinite. In addition to a physical dimension, space also has a social dimension. In 1929 Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One's Own in which she reflects upon the following question: Where are you truly free as a woman? Within the walls of your own room or in the world outside?

The artists in I Think I Look More like the Chrysler Building create personal spaces that allow them to navigate through the public ones. The public spaces assigned to us are mostly based on rational principles and rooted in economic motives. They have a normalizing power that also has a major psychological and social impact. To counter this, these artists collect and assemble materials that reflect themselves, and create imaginary landscapes that—unlike actual landscapes—can define and represent the individual. Thanks to architecture and decoration, we can create spaces that allow us to live our lives the way we want, outside the normative frameworks of society.

Kasper Bosmans, Lena Henke, Win McCarthy, Annelies Planteijdt and Diane Simpson each navigate through the urban landscape in their own way, but they all investigate similar issues: how can our environment be mapped? To what extent are the body and psyche subject to this environment? And can the body and the city influence each other?

Vleeshal would like to thank Bortolami Gallery, New York, THE EKARD COLLECTION and Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, for their generous support.
Lena Henke (Germany, 1982) expands the range of meaning of traditional sculpture by incorporating questions of femaleness and the production of power relations in urban space. In doing so, she not only engages the myth of masculinity; she also works with the strands of historical tradition—the questions of pedestal and space—to interrogate the logic of sculptural representation and representability. She holds the reins with great self-assurance, controlling the representation of women's bodies and its intervening in the mechanisms of urban architecture. It is Henke’s far-reaching reflections on the capacity of the sculptural that enable her, conversely, to grasp urbanity as a historically evolved sculpture, whose social mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion can be altered and redefined by means of targeted interventions.

The three houses installed in the center of the Vleeshal are ceramic miniatures of the "crooked house" (1552), which is part of the famous “Park of Monsters” in Bomarzo (Italy), a mannerist sculpture park commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini in the 16th century. The clear plexi glass plinths bear witness to Middleburg’s geographical location surrounded by water on a peninsula in Zeeland (Netherlands). Each of the pedestals has a different hight and thereby various angles, while evoking the idea of the houses sitting on the surface of water or gliding above a block of ice. Henke’s fascination for Surrealism and in particular by the art movement’s close relationship to psychoanalysis, humor and the subconscious are at play here.

Vleeshall's significant floor pattern stays visible underneath the translucent plinths and evokes memories of New York’s famous urban street grid. Above this quasi city map hang green street signs, dangling on long rusty chains and hooks, which where formerly used in meat production. In its aesthetics reminiscent of the street and avenue signage in New York, the imaginary names are based on puns like “STEELPATTERN" and “MYDROWNINGDOWNTOWN”, bringing together emotional states with artistic materials and names of urban places. In connecting the “city” with the “sky”, the ceiling with the floor, Henke emphasises the specific spatiality of the Vleeshalle and creates an expanded sense of (urban) space.

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