Nanna Kaiser: I Ride

FOR EXACT LOCATION PLEASE CALL +43 677 63166112

Nanna Kaiser
I Ride

A sheet of latex hangs limply over a transparent horse’s saddle. All tension and posture have been drained from the fragile material. This soft body is out of shape – unable to perform, unable to represent. It is neither sleek, nor tough, nor perfect. Instead, it appears unstable, scarred, even wretched. And yet, it feels oddly alive. Its abject corporeality stands in contrast to the ghostly polyester saddle beneath it – a hollow shell, little more than a volatile memory of its leather predecessor, absorbing the surroundings of the exhibition space.

By translating and combining different materialities, Nanna Kaiser explores the dominant objects of public life, unpacking their shifting meanings. For I Ride, she ‘skinned’ an assemblage made from a horse’s saddle and a Tesla car seat. The artist covered this hybrid form with multiple layers of liquid latex, capturing an exact print of its surface. This is a delicate, risky process, prone to tearing. Just like the subsequent molding of the saddle in polyester that requires heat and the strength of the artist’s body.

Few brands are as entangled in ideological contradiction as Tesla. Due to Elon Musk’s polarizing presence, the company’s image is a tangle of sustainability, clean energy, and advanced technology on one hand – and social media provocation, alt-right flirtations, and hyper-masculine bravado on the other. Tesla is in an identity crisis, and Kaiser seizes on this instability to undermine the brand’s presumed supremacy.

The artist confronts the dominance and aggression embodied in these objects with a willful material that fights control: Latex cannot be dominated. It finds its own forms, guided but never forced by the artist’s hand. Even after shaping, it escapes containment, decomposing, transforming. While the luxury car promotes high speeds that the body isn’t designed to feel, these objects generate a visceral experience that resonates in the gut – repellent yet strangely comforting andpleasurable. This intimacy may also stem from the incorporation of personal traces – Kaiser’s own clothes, hair, and studio dirt – pressed into the latex. With theiremotionality, the works appear alien in contrast to the 1stdistrict “alpha cars” that dominate the underground garage where the mobile exhibition space VAN is parked. But although the artist’s appropriation is an act of resistance, it is also tender: it offers these once-unapproachable objects a new personality, a speculative life unfolding under fluorescent lights.

Ramona Heinlein