Art Cologne

Raelis Vasquez

Raelis Vasquez uses portraiture to focus on people from his communities (Afro-Caribbean and Latinx) in every-day encounters and experiences, both in private and in public spaces and often highlighting them at ease, in familiar or familial gatherings and moments of reflection. The artist works primarily in oil, acrylic, and pastels but also experiments with incorporating both material and immaterial elements of memory and home in his work (i.e. sand from his home country, the Dominican Republic). In his works presented at Art Cologne, we see five snippets of outdoor daily life, in the DR, a young man herding cattle, youth sitting on a concrete block shaded by a large tree, a portrait of a boy looking back at the viewer, boys sitting in a small river boat guarded by soldiers and a young man sitting on an electric pole overlooking a view of houses and trees. There is a quite intimate feeling, anticipation or a slowed passing of time.

Anike Joyce Sadiq

Reflecting on the other side of quiet or patient pause, Anike Joyce Sadiq work draws focus on exhaustion, burn-out and perhaps untenable feeling of rest-lessness. Her installation "Embracements", developed in collaboration with fellow artist and choreographer Laurie Young, is designed as gym-like equipment appearing to have the ability or potential to be used for sitting, laying or hanging from. However, they are non-functional elements that are neither comfortable to lay in nor useful in the way their gym-muses might be. The juxtaposition of "gym-machine-like" structures appearing to encourage rest clashes two opposing ideas: those of getting a work-out and resting the body to return to being productive. The work, in a very material and emotive way, gnaws at the idea of exhausted bodies in need of rest but unable to find refuge or recovery - suspended in a state of exhaustion.

Four of the five sculptures that make up “Embracements” (2021) occupy the floor space of the booth, with the paintings by Vasquez sparsely placed on the walls. The sculptures are primarily grey and cobalt blue and are made from carpet, metal, foam, cushions, neon yellow tension straps, taking clues from gym materials like steel bars or plastic mats, with the paintings giving pops of color and outdoor views on the walls so that we cannot view exhaustion and restlessness without reflecting on moments of ease, and vice versa.