Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to announce New Positions, an exhibition by Christian Holstad.
Holstad’s practice is united not in material, but in approach – across installation, sculpture, collage and performance, he employs traditional techniques and meticulous craft to unexpected, and transformative ends.
In New Positions, larger than life-size figures executed in the both ceramic and fabric populate the gallery, each derived from a single pattern based on Holstad’s own body. The works function not as self-portraits, but as an intuitive meditation on the male figure. Postured to appear as if they are standing in a shower, or reclining in a bath, the installation suggests a spa – not in the modern sense, but a layered history of ritual bathing meant to better oneself both physically and mentally. Paired with a grouping of phallic vases, which contain healing herbs and tinctures, together the works recast the male body as a vessel, able to receive, and change.
New Positions is Christian Holstad’s second exhibition with the gallery. Past solo exhibitions of Holstad’s work include Toothpick, Massimo de Carlo, Milan, 2016, Corrections, Victoria Miro, London, 2014, I Confess, Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, 2009, The Terms of Endearment, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2006, and Gaeity: Discovering the Lost Art (in Absentia), Kunsthalle Zurich, 2004. Holstad’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, MoCA, Los Angeles, LACMA, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others.

Opening Reception : Thursday, May 18, 6-8pm

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