Abrasives (Equestrians), 2019, made up of thirty-five individual pieces, forms part of a number of larger series of newspaper based works that the artist has been making since 2017. Arranged over two walls into a geometrical outline akin to a stepped pyramid, the papers are marked by gestural traces of everyday objects and actions, disrupting their original ordered text and image layout with frenzied applications of black paint. Pieroth almost entirely obscures this familiar background in some, in one instance kneeling directly on the paper to create unruly formations of dark clouds. In other works in the series, the clusters appear more distant and delicate. Their composition evokes notions of conquest, battle, exhaustion and defeat. Testifying to the fragility of human endeavour, the artist transforms the black paint into an extension of the body. Pieroth describes the haunting atmosphere of Abrasives (Equestrians) as that of a paradise lost; an odyssey through a ghostly landscape in an infernal state of drought amidst the surplus.

The works on paper are bracketed by Reservoir, 2020, a slightly bent, three-legged sheet metal screen that stands at the entrance to Gallery 2, impeding the immediate passage to and from the interior of the space. Made of worn and discarded industrial leftovers, the sculpture’s precarious physicality and bowed posture confronts the viewer with a sense of instability and uncertainty. As with much of Pieroth’s practice, the works in this exhibition evolve from her consideration of ideas around notions of offering and rejecting; of supply and the denial thereof.

since days I cannot seem to build myself… I look down at my foot
and I realise how tiny it has become, how minuscule…

Kirsten Pieroth, born 1970, Offenbach a.M., Germany, lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Events and Guises, Mathew Gallery, New York, 2018; Menu, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, Nurnberg, Germany, 2013; Office Baroque, Antwerp, Belgium, 2012. Pieroth’s work has also been included in the following recent group exhibitions;  in search of characters…, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Germany, 2017; Prototypology – An Index of Process and Mutation, Gagosian Gallery, Rome, 2016; The Biography of Things, ACCA Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2015; ACTS, Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2014; The Imminence of Poetics, 30. São Paulo Biennale, São Paulo, 2012.

Researcher’s Response | Devotion: Book of hours and Kirsten Pieroth by Dr. Jill Unkel

With thanks to the Goethe-Institut, Irland, Dublin for their support of this exhibition.

To read the exhibition handout and for full image credits please click here.

Image credit: (left) Kirsten Pieroth, Water, 2020. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and the Douglas Hyde Gallery. Photography by Louis Haugh. (right) Kirsten Pieroth, Abrasives (Equestrians), 2019 (detail), toes. Newspaper pages, paint, in thirty-five parts, 40 x 57.5 cm each. Image: Courtesy of the artist.

The Douglas Hyde Gallery is proudly supported by the Arts Council, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and Trinity College, Dublin.