68projects welcomes 2023 with a duo exhibition by artists Agnes Lammert (\*1984 in Dresden) and Sebastian Maas (\*1984 in Aachen) titled: “Distant Belongings”.

Agnes Lammert presents her sculptures in which something seems to be packed or wrapped, but whose content we can never determine with certainty. They seem as if they could be wet and heavy. The outlines of the forms wrapped in cloth are reminiscent of human bodies, thus suggesting the absence of man. Or are they even ghosts, moulded from plaster? Her sense of physicality and draping can be seen, for example, in the hanging sculpture hoist the rag in space. Inspired by dance such as Japanese Butoh, states of movement such as holding, falling, rising, improvising are evident in her work. Some of Lammert's sculptures appear as if scorched by high heat, including virtuosically draped materiality as in the work of the late Gothic artist Veit Stoß, a source of inspiration for the sculptress. For his wooden figures of the Virgin Mary, which can be found in churches in Nuremberg and Krakow, Stoß transformed wood into seemingly soft fabric. Starting from fabricated models, she is interested in the in-between, the voids created in the sculptural moulding process, which she fills with wax, plaster, concrete, plastics or bronze.

The sepia-toned monkey portraits are by Sebastian Maas, who painted them with oil on truck tarpaulin, which is a typical painting technique for him. He juxtaposes the primates with large-scale works that quote well-known hunting scenes by Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. The lion and hippo hunts pulse as if in a feverish LSD dream. The primates are from an ongoing series in which the artist has painted monkey species (there are about 500 known species), many of which are endangered. Inevitably, it seems, some may become extinct in a near future. Are humans to blame and can this be prevented? Science is a basic interest for the Berlin-based artist. Before Maas started painting, he studied biology and neuroscience at the LMU in Munich. He is interested in nature and a wide variety of human life forms. He reflects these topics in his collages, mostly large-format paintings on which references to current consumer culture, queer life and art history can be seen. Gender roles are thematised in his portraits by morphing his face with the silhouette and body of mostly females in a painterly way. His self-portrait can be seen here, as well as the identification and confrontation with the always di!erent figure, as can also be seen in Cindy Sherman's work.

The many silent observers in Sebastian Maas' paintings hold something enigmatic and mysterious in them,  there is as little revealed as the unseen in Agnes Lammert's sculptures.
