BEGGARS premieres a suite of new paintings and drawings by the Berlin-based artist from 2020 and 2021. Since the beginning of the pandemic she has focused her work solely on painting stripes. Similar to a speech act, these bold, colorful paintings can be seen as painting acts that resist against the imposition of daily news and mad projections of the future. At the same time, some of the larger works "hide" words between the black stripes, and — by means of the large-scale wall painting — the whole exhibition itself is very much influenced by poetry. 

In the exhibition catalog essay, art critic and curator Camila McHugh writes:  "If you read between the lines, Sophia Domagala’s exhibition pays subtle tribute to Pati Hill (*1921-2004), who explored the relationship between image and text, largely by using the photocopier as an artistic instrument. Words like lust, why and lucky or happy in peach or pink block-letters are just discernible in Domagala's paintings, almost receding into the lighter washes of color behind them. Hill is a deep source of inspiration for Sophia Domagala, a kindred spirit even. As such, these almost invisible words are easily entangled with the late American artist’s own play with in/visibility by using a Xerox machine (in the 1970s, a secretary's tool) to make images of domestic objects and in so doing, create a visual language for the invisibility of women's labor. Beggars, the title of Domagala's first exhibition at Moutains, is lifted from the last line of Hill's poem 'Craters of the moon!': 'I would have liked this picture printed on pink paper, but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.' There's something folky, western even, about this idiom that knocks fantasy in favor of realism or hard work. The image is wonderful though—wispy wishes galloping."

Beggars

Take 3D Tour