Koschmieder presents 21 new sculptural works for his debut show at Galerie Mezzanin. This show is a sequel of a previous show in Los Angeles in January 2019 in its motif. Not uncommonly, both galleries were not able to provide budgets sufficient enough to ship completed artworks from New York City where Koschmieder lives and works, hence the presentation of works constrained in form by the economy of art-transport. The sculptures are serial replicants of the plastic body of his own personal luggage – used both as a mold for paper-mâché and vehicle for trans-Atlantic carriage. Hollow and shaped out of corrugated paper stabilized by epoxy resin, the sculptures were shipped mid-production as layered sheaths of suitcase-molded bisections (severed where a zipper would be), enveloping the actual suitcase of mimicry that were accompanied as checked-in luggage on an economy flight, thus resolving the issue of shipping cost. In Berlin, were they reclaimed to a completed state and futher transported here.   

“In the past many years, Koschmieder has developed a distinctive technique of sculptural-painting hybrid - a peculiar amalgamation of paper, inkjet dye, spray paint, and epoxy resin. The effect approximates facsimile as in past works such as faux readymades of radiators, corrugated scrap building material, trash cans, steel posts - elements that remain unnoticed or quietly blend into the background. Imperative to his reproduction, a labor intensive process of printing then molding and painting, Koschmieder’s work holds a deeply handmade quality, exceedingly more rare in a digitized, techno-fabricated world”

Serial as cloned forms, these suitcases are left to be individuated by surface qualities. Though ranging uniquely in color and texture, all are bound by the application of some hyperbolic patina (rust, scratches, chipping paint) that characterizes states of deterioration. The widespread decay applied to an object symbolic of our present stages an unspecified moment of finality without bearing an explanatory narrative, thus positioning any quandary on the future side of apocalypse. Being bare of wheels and handles renders a deprivation of mobility. Purposefully reduced to relic, the static arrangement of rectangular masses imply mystery - a poseur of cemetery or audaciously of Stonehenge, delivering hypothetical evidence for the entertaining pasttime of pondering our own great fallout.