© Sasson Soffer Foundation, Poster by Jolanta Mikulskyte
Foreign Territory presents Beyond Ecstasy at Personal Structures
Date: April 20 – November 24, 2024
Venue: Palazzo Bembo, 2nd floor, Room #11, Riva del Carbon #4793, 30124 Venezia, Italy
Foreign Territory’s exhibition, Beyond Ecstasy, features art by the Iraq-born Sasson Soffer, and Lithuanian artists Martynas Gediminas and Brigita Krasauskaite, that offer personal perspectives on the themes of freedom, escape, release, and the divine.
Using a variety of materials and formal approaches, each artist describes experiences that are ineffable, those that are longed for, or exist as transgressive, magical, or mystical phenomena, whether in the throes of physical ecstasy, within the realms of the imagination, or whilst contemplating the beauty of a vast night sky and the universe.
The works exist to create a tangible depiction of these themes, that then connect to the rich individual interior worlds of each viewer. With their imagination and emotional response, the visitor completes both the art and the moment.
Above: Beyond Ecstasy installation views | Photography by Federico Vespignani
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Brigita Krasauskaite’s finely woven linen and bamboo silk tapestry, Flash, 2023, is inspired by the feminine energy and ecstasy of Saint Theresa, renowned for her religious passion. The abstract artwork captures the spark of rapture as radiant rays in pale golden yellows and heavenly blues. Krasauskaite describes her process as ‘weaving light’ in a meditative, rhythmic state, one familiar to all women working throughout the centuries crafting tapestries or rugs, a process in communion with the material and tangible creative expression.
Flying Carpet, 2024, a sculptural installation by Martynas Gediminas, is a vision of a carpet in blue, the color of the sky, the heavens, or freedom, pierced or crucified so that its flight is arrested. A dangerous transgression of an imaginary escape curtailed. The historical, supernatural idea of the magic carpet, symbolic of travels in the mind, is here shown as both an escape and a threat to societal pressures, boundaries, and norms.
Paintings by Sasson Soffer, Beyond (Diptych), 1959-1960, portray swirling realms of deep blue that could be the heavens above or mysterious ocean depths. Limitless, they recall like Yves Klein’s monochromatic blue works, the vastness of space, and all that is beyond known dimensions. As when looking at the night sky, or contemplating the magnitude of the universe, they invite the viewer into an immersive experience, one that is beyond the boundaries of the human form, that bypasses all rational thought.
Founded by artist and curator Brigita Krasauskaite, Foreign Territory supports the work of contemporary artists, art foundations, and artists’ estates seeking to advance their vision and financial success in the international art market, public spaces and museums, and private collections.
Krasauskaite completed her MA in Textile Design at Vilnius Academy of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1998 and Art Business Administration and Museum Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, 2001.
Martynas Gediminas (Lithuanian, b. 1974) holds an MA in textile art and design from Vilnius Academy of Arts. His artistic focus revolves around meticulous attention to overlapping surface textures, materiality, and the rhythmic structures of his subjects.
Sasson Soffer’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; OK Harris, New York; and Carnegie International. Soffer’s solo exhibitions include presentations at the Betty-Parsons Gallery, New York; Poindexter Gallery, New York; John Daniels Gallery, New York; Portland Museum of Fine Arts, Portland, Maine; and Galerie Birch, Copenhagen, Denmark. Public collections in which Soffer’s work is represented include the Whitney Museum, New York; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York; and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
Sasson Soffer Foundation
In 1998, the Sasson Soffer Foundation was incorporated as a non-profit organization to promote patronage of sculpture and painting, sponsor art exhibits, and advance public interest in Sasson Soffer’s works. Among other activities, the Foundation has gifted monumental sculptures to sites in various countries, among them: China, Cuba, Lithuania, and Israel; and to various colleges, including Connecticut College and Queens College.
In 2006, the Town of East Hampton, New York, purchased a five-acre parcel of land from the Foundation and turned it into a Sculpture Park to exhibit Sasson Soffer’s monumental sculptures.
Personal Structures is the biennial contemporary art exhibition organized and hosted by the European Cultural Centre in Venice. The group show seeks to document the diversity of contemporary art in today’s world, aiming to feature and combine different expressions from visual artists, galleries, as well as photographers, sculptors, institutions, and universities, that break away from any ideological, political and geographical barriers.
Major support for Beyond Ecstasy was provided by the Sasson Soffer Foundation, Trinity Jurex and the printing group Repro.
Organized and curated by Brigita Krasauskaite, Foreign Territory, New York, Vilnius.
For press inquiries, please get in touch with Foreign Territory at b.krasauskaite@gmail.com
Instagram: foreignterritory_inc
All visuals are subject to copyright.
All reproduction is subject to the authorization of the Sasson Soffer Foundation.
