Raphaela Vogel at Galerie Gregor Staiger

Galerie Gregor Staiger is pleased to present a two-part solo exhibition by Berlin-based Raphaela Vogel across both the gallery’s main Limmatstrasse location and its temporary space at Zollikerstrasse. Opening first at Zollikerstrasse 251 on May 19th, Vogel presents an ambitious large-scale installation, along with a body of new sculptural and video works concerned with the possibilities and limitations of language.

Exhibition Theme

Occupying the main room of the space, an expansive new installation bisects the room with a gate-like structure in the center. The work’s title “Vor den Toren der Sprache” translates to ‘At the gates of language’, alluding to a unique threshold in which, during early infancy, the capability to reproduce all possible phonemes is at a heightened level. The speakers in the piece are held by small, plastic casts of cherubs, along with pastel-hued flowers which adorn the metal arches that part the space. The metal skeleton of the installation is propped up by twelve sculptures of radiators on either side of the arches, each cast in polyurethane elastomer.

Further behind on the back wall of the space, Vogel has hung two new wall-mounted sculptural works. The central bodies are cast in plastic, with a post-it firmly planted on the foreheads, reading ‘language’ in German. The title of the series ‘Wer bin ich’ references the party game in which each player must figure out which famous person they have been assigned to by asking yes or no questions.

In the darkened, smaller side-room, a video is projected of the artist’s young son bouncing in a baby seat, filmed from above. As the video runs, a song by the German punk band, Die Kassierer plays from the speakers resting atop the projector.

Artistic Approach

Two new leather works are hung in the furthest corner of the main space, both depicting painted ice-cream cones. The title ‘Ein Nichts an der Waffel’ addresses pictorially the typical phrase of ordering a scoop of ice-cream in a cone, and is a play on the German saying ‘Einen an der Waffel haben’. Vogel’s physical act of cutting out the material as ‘scoops’ also touches upon the notion of hollowness, a recurring approach which runs through her practice at large and the exhibition.

Upcoming Exhibition

To coincide with the 5th edition of Zurich Art Weekend, the second part of Vogel’s exhibition will open at Limmatstrasse on June 10th. ‘My Appropriation of Her Holy Hollowness’, a large-scale sculptural and sound installation, will inhabit the whole of the Limmatstrasse gallery. Originally shown at Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers in the summer of 2021, the exhibition marked Vogel’s first institutional solo presentation in France.

Raphaela Vogel, born in 1988 in Nuremberg, Germany, has had numerous solo exhibitions showcasing her unique artistic vision and exploration of themes related to language, interpretation, and childhood.