Sarah Ortmeyer, GRANDMASTER, 2018

In chess, limitless and infinite outcomes are dramatized through a narrative of conquest. It is a game that devours the army of the opponents, through either assassination or sacrifice, until light or darkness wins.

A grid of black paint obscures images depicting different atmospheres—either bright blue, humid beige, sunset pink. Each of these chessboards, masked over clouded or cloudless skies, splits the firmament above us into the polarities of an everlasting board.

Bodies of female world chess champions, posed like pin-ups from Playboy, recline on the beach, lay face down on the bed, and gaze back at you from over their shoulder.

Figures of knights, rooks, pawns, scatter among the floor in marble clusters, either already defeated and plotting revenge, or strategizing an attack.

Wild and disobedient yet calculated and controlled, the GRANDMASTER SERIES pictures an unraveling of the intellectual towards something more chaotic, more human.

Chess as seduction.

Chess as grief.

Chess as exaltation.

Chess as sorrow.

(Love, religion, war, and sex possesses no better metaphor)

Cradling the extremities of human experience in a single square.

The exhibition incorporates the formal elements of chess alongside a
series of new paintings and sculptures. In this show, the personification
of heaven and hell is also explored through the artist’s ‘emoji shadow
series,’ a body of work that interrogates the relationship to the origins
of painting, universal language, and iconography. In her paintings
of palm trees, devils, and rainbows, Ortmeyer captures the essence
of the codex as both a type of script and a physical object capable of
existing in nature.

Comprised of all new works in a massive arrangement, ‘FLYRT’ features classic artistic disciplines such as sculpture, painting, and film, developing non-traditional modes of presentation. HUMAN-SIZED CHESSBOARDS are interspersed throughout the three exhibition rooms. The CHESSBOARD PAINTINGS reflect the ethereal colors of the sky. These oversized panels are accompanied by a pair of MINIATURE CHESSBOARDS. The gridded pictures are the latest works in Ortmeyer’s long and continued investigation into chess, emphasizing the aesthetics and dynamics of this iconic sport. Throughout the building and protruding from the walls are chess pieces made of OSTRICH EGGS. Through nature these large female products have developed unique distorted surfaces. Premiering in Kunstverein München’s Kino, the silent movie FLYRT POETICA is the result of Ortmeyer’s long lasting correspondence with a rising teen idol and rapper, during which the pair developed a peculiar collective vocabulary punctuated by the consistent, repeated appearances of sophisticated POEMS, BLACK EMOJIS, DICK PICS, LUXURY ITEMS, NUDES, SPIDERS, FILM STILLS, IDEOGRAMS, LYRICS, SYMPHONIC SCORES, HOLLYWOOD, HEARTS, MUSES and ARTWORKS by artists such as ROSEMARIE TROCKEL, LOUISE
BOURGEOIS, ALMA THOMAS, and ORTMEYER herself. Demonstrating the rapid visually-focused nature of 21st century exchange, Ortmeyer articulates a return to HIEROGLYPHICS, where pictures have become a more immediate and nuanced form of language. This correspondence was collected as a HARDCOVER BOOK and
printed black on silver, a mutual material choice by the rapper and the artist. The book was then transposed into a moving image, to be projected onto the SILVER SCREEN. This procession of HIEROGLYPHS also forms the basis of a new series of painted works on silver paper. Featuring rapid hand-rendered icons of BLACK SPIDERS and BLACK HEARTS, these coded paintings chart a correspondence throughout the exhibition spaces. ‘FLYRT’ combines a system of relentlessly repeated variables varying in size and material, while keeping the core of
being emotionally completely raw.
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« Was she a happy mother, a spiritual guru, a secret agent, the wife of someone famous?
Or was she simply one of these female chess champions whose name we had forgotten? From one competition to the next, she lived below dramatic skies. Skies with impossible colors: off colors, off feelings from chaos to infinity. Someone once told her: “We are going through uncomfortably exciting times.” She needed a change in her life, she used to be a champion, and kept on thinking of what was coming next ? I was remembered the other day of her golden ring LXIV (64) she’s been wearing it since I’ve known her. Her idea of permanence and consistency always imbedded in her look. In a bar in New York years ago, a friend said to her: “We are the champions of the champions of the champions...”
The tale of a night with Alexandra, Susan, Natalia, diluted in white liquors.
She felt that throughout the years she kept on collecting data, a great amount of information that could help her win over and over. People recently informed her about this new artificial intelligence system called FaceNet, that claims to recognize
She was intrigued ... . For now on it will be all about “hackers and painters”. The terrifying idea that we couldn’t loose someone or get lost if we wanted to. The comforting idea that faces of loved ones were never to be erased. Like the exquisite marbling on the precious eggs, she composed with a fearless friend. After all she was thinking of moving to a new city or a Greek island or just staying where she was, but much more still than before. » - Julie Boukobza

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Sarah Ortmeyer

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Sarah Ortmeyer

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