Concentrations 60: Lucie Stahl

The Dallas Museum of Art presents Concentrations 60: Lucie Stahl, an immersive installation of both new and loaned work by the Berlin-based artist. In the artist’s first US solo museum show, Stahl explores the intersection of nostalgia, patriotism, Americana, and surreality. The exhibition, which is on view September 16, 2016 through March 12, 2017, is part of the Museum’s longstanding "Concentrations" series of project-based solo exhibitions by international emerging artists. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the series, which began in 1981 as part of the DMA’s commitment to the work of living artists.

Stahl utilizes a flatbed scanner to create large-format images in which various objects such as food, photographs, magazine clippings, and trash appear to emerge from a dark abyss. The resulting images are encased in resin, giving them a glossy, tactile finish and distinct material presence. Stahl’s work plays with the notion of liquidity in its many forms—from finance to bodily fluids to the malleability of gender, identity, and images. In all her work, the artist explores the trappings of modern-day consumer culture through found objects and imagery, addressing branding, consumption, addiction/dependency, and excess.

For Concentrations 60, Stahl has created a new body of 14 resin-encased poster works together with a grouping of Prayer Wheels—found soda and beer cans that have been transformed into post-apocalyptic kinetic sculptures. Of these pseudo-devotional forms, the artist explains: “When I transform old Coke or beer cans found in the California desert, where they’ve been used for target shooting since forever, into prayer wheels, the work starts to open up to all these issues art history is always drowning in—national identity, romanticism, nature—mixed with the loss of religion, which has been replaced by an almost folkish attachment to consumer goods.”

Acknowledgements
Concentrations 60: Lucie Stahl is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and is curated by Gabriel Ritter, the former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, with Nolan Jimbo, Temporary Project Coordinator, Curatorial. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color illustrated brochure with an interview between the artist and exhibition curator. Additional support for the presentation is provided by the Contemporary Art Initiative and TWO X TWO for AIDS and Art, an annual fundraising event that jointly benefits amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and the Dallas Museum of Art. Air transportation is provided by American Airlines. The exhibition is included in the Museum’s free general admission.