Maruša Sagadin

Maruša Sagadin’s work explores the intersections of private and public space based on continuous research into architectural history and the question of for whom a specific architecture is built. With a playful, imaginative approach reminiscent of Pop Art, the Vienna-based, Slovenian artist makes sculptures that are often closely linked to the human form, incorporating oversized body parts such as feet and lips. At the heart of her practice are the dynamics of jokes and humor: how they unfold and how they can be used as a subversive means to dismantle the mechanisms of power and the norms and authorities we take for granted. This game of wits evolves through playful juxtapositions, intended confusions and visual puns. In her sculptural works, often larger-than-life proportions, she often employs manipulations of scale and alienating effects to shatter established realities and codes.

In Hoop (green) pieces of jewelry, gold chains or wooden pearls, are interlaced to form a mesh resembling a delicate basketball hoop. What could appear at first as a girlish, trivial display of trinkets, might also be interpreted as an opposition against sport’s insistence on competitive efficiency, functionality, speed and success. Bad Mood Without a Kiosk and Kitchen (Juliana with Capitals) and Summer are part of a series of sculptural benches, which Sagadin produced during the pandemic and were used as sculptures in public space. Reminiscent of puppets and magical worlds, the benches draw again on bodily forms: one bench is carried by two large breasts, while the other has two voluminous shoes for legs. In Schlechter Witz (II) (Bad Joke (II)), the form of an oversized pear plays with the German word for pear ​“Birne” which can describe not only the fruit but also a (light) bulb (Glühbirne), and is also slang for a large, pear-shaped head. The strength of Sagadin’s works lies in the playful handling of words and meanings, and in their inherent ambiguity. With their surrealist language, they offer alternative methods for (re)imagining collective space(s).

Bad Mood Without a Kiosk and Kitchen (Juliana with Capitals), 2020
Concrete, wood, pigment, paint
68 × 170 × 65 cm

Summer, 2020
Wooden surface green/​orange, concrete, wood, pigment, paint
57 × 200 × 30 cm

Hoop (green), 2023
Cardboard, styrofoam, acrylic polymer, pigments, metal, wood
100 × 35 × 65 cm

Schlechter Witz (II) (Bad joke (II)), 2024
Cardboard, styrofoam, acrylic resin, pigments, metal
107 × 30 × 40 cm

Courtesy the artist and Christine König Galerie, Vienna