Galerie Tanja Wagner is pleased to present new works by Mariechen Danz.

The central work of the exhibition is the sculpture WOMB TOMB, which also lends its title to the show. A thermoactive human body has been laid out in the gallery space. The body morphs, patterns and structures emerge and disappear, the sculpture interacts with its environment. WOMB TOMB pulsates in a constant state of being in-between.

The only visible innards of the figure are organs of exchange and transformation: lungs and heart and oversized intestines. All this is laid bare, while the gender of the figure is not a category that is of interest. Or not yet. Oscillating between the two poles potentiality and stagnation, this is precisely what the work anticipates: a state of being simultaeously not-yet or not-anymore in the world.

Danz has converted the exhibition space into a WOMB TOMB, in which casts of intestines, stomach, throat, tongue and brain are elevated. Layers of empty skins made from printed fabric hang over bent steel. Here skins form the map of a landscape, fragments of organs are topographic models, the large reclining sculpture carries images from infrared cameras and depictions of thermostatic meteorological models under its skin.

Danz proposes a mapping and archaeology of the human body that is in a constant state of becoming and yet always already deceased. It is a body that is fragmented and dissected, flayed and untouched at the same time. Procedures of biological and medical surveying, political and judicial attempts of standardisation as well as cultural processes of attributing meaning have inscribed themselves into it.

With WOMB TOMB, Danz continues her examination of the human body as the absolute basis of our perception of the world and our cognitive development within it. Drawing a parallel between organs of transformation and changing environments, Danz confronts us with a critical fracking of body images and systems of knowledge that is as psychedelic as it is personal.

With special thanks to Sculpture Berlin and Kerstin Brätsch.

Mariechen Danz, born 1980 in Dublin, lives and works in Berlin.

In 2014 Danz received the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff scholarship and in 2013 the Villa Romana fellowship. Danz work
has been presented in several solo exhibitions and performances, such as at CAN centre d’art Neuchâtel (2014), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; Venus & Apoll at Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2013); GAK – Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; Kunstverein Göttingen (2012).
Furthermore she has participated in numerous group exhibitions e.g. at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin (2013); Institut für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg (2012); Based in Berlin, Berlin,
4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, The Museum of Art and Design, New York (2011); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, OPEN International Performance Art Festival, Beijing (2009); Broad Art Center, Los Angeles (2008) and Kunstverein Kassel (2006).