DUSSELDORF.- Galerie Rupert Pfab is presenting a solo exhibition featuring new works by the California-based artist Luka Fineisen (*1974).

Luka Fineisen works with site-specific installations, sculptures and drawings, in each case intensively exploring the properties of the most varied materials, including polyester, wax, paper, foam, alveolar sheets, rubber, and other synthetic materials, as well as nearly intangible materials such as water and wind. An important role is played by the various physical states of each material. She uses these to transform substances by forming them into something new and hitherto nonexistent.

In the exhibition mission drift I, the artist also tackles the so-called law of polarity. She thus juxtaposes narrowness and wideness, black and white, and lightness and heaviness. This aspect is also taken up as a theme in her ‘foodstuffs’ presented here. The choice of material lets the appetizing works enter into a relationship of mutual tension between naturalness and artificiality.

Luka Fineisen was born in Offenburg and studied at the Memphis College of Art in Tennessee/USA, as well as at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. Her works have been presented in group exhibitions in, among others, the Folkwang Museum in Essen (2003), the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2008), the Museum Lehmbruck in Duisburg (2009), the Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen (2010), the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2013) and MARTa Herford (2012/2014). Solo exhibitions have been presented at, among others, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2008), the Koelnberg Kunstverein in Cologne (2010), the Representative Office of NRW in Berlin (2011), the Goethe Institut Paris (2012) and the maison rouge in Paris (2012). Through the 26th of June 2016, installations will be on view as part of a solo exhibition in the Kunstverein Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich.

Luka Fineisen has received numerous grants and awards, including the Max Pechstein Prize Zwickau (2007), a one-year studio grant from Bilbao-Arte, Spain (2001), an artist grant from the Cusanuswerk Bonn (2000–2005), a Wilhelm Lehmbruck Grant from the City of Duisburg (2007–2009), and a grant from Kunstfonds Bonn (2009). She was also honoured in 2007 with the ADO Art Award of the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf and participated in the international art and artist exchange program ‘Transfer Korea-NRW’ in Seoul, South Korea from 2011 through 2013.