In her third solo exhibition with Michael Schultz, Sonja Alhäuser remains true to her well-known subject, but brings it to visualization in a completely new and different way than in her previous projects.After many years of researching the topic of food, of drawing related recipes, translating them into participatory installations, as well as lavish banquets, she now focuses more on the act of ingestion itself, and also examines the process of impact on human metabolism - whether alcohol and other intoxicants, or eucalyptus or St. John's wort tablets. With pleasure, we remember Sonja Alhäuser’s Food-Fest-Installation Maximelange at the gallery Michael Schultz in 2013, where all visitors to the vernissage were indulging on her buffet.
For the artist, born in Westerwald in 1969, transformation processes in the body are symbolic of processes in our life’s course; the microcosm of the body or the principle of the daily routine in transfer point to macrocosm and the whole path of life.
Feelings and sensations as insight into the human being are made visible in Alhäuser’s new pictorial drawings.
This sensitive, graphic observation of processes that take place within the body, but which in the large-format drawings also become independent in line whirls and color falls are bringing Alhäuser’s work to life - and the practical applicability of everything experienced and seen in their pictorial worlds. Everything flows, and you may bite in some things, too.
Sonja Alhäuser's works have received numerous awards and scholarships, including a project grant from the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Foundation, the Förderpreis of Nothrhine-Westphalia, or, more recently, a working grant at the Villa Massimo in Rome.