On the occasion of vanessa german’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, curator Allison Glenn delves into the artist's newest bodies of work, on view across two of the gallery's spaces in New York. Affirming the power of german's sculptures to transform and imagine new worlds, Glenn explores the talismans and hidden gestures embedded in german's monumental heads and "fallen figures." Unraveling german's assemblages of mineral crystals, beads, textiles, porcelain, and other materials, she foregrounds the potential for the artist's work to inspire love and healing. vanessa german: GUMBALL—there is absolutely no space between body and soul remains on view at 509 West 27th Street & 514 West 28th Street through Saturday, May 10.
vanessa german develops ornate environments, sculptures, and public art projects that imagine new worlds. It is this otherworldliness that is the ground upon which her extravagantly multimedia assemblage works are formed. With GUMBALL—there is absolutely no space between body and soul, german has developed an exhibition that asks the viewer to move slowly and with intention, taking in every bit of each surface with a watchful, attentive eye. This approach of moving around the works with your whole body, mind, and spiritual presence reveals the slight gestures that might be otherwise hidden.
Listening to german speak is a delightfully mesmerizing experience, and to be in her presence is to be subsumed by all that she creates. As we walk through the exhibition, her mind deftly travels from childhood memories to the power of love, vogueing, offerings, self-care, art histories, and back again, calling you in through her abundant use of materials, including mineral crystals, beads, black-painted conch shells, language, textiles, and found porcelain objects. GUMBALL includes two bodies of work—nine monumental heads and eight smaller “fallen figures” across two spaces—which together transform the world through acts of creation. The busts draw on ancient Mesoamerican Olmec heads and are conceived by german as maps of a sacred place where the creative expression of all people can flourish.
On the verso of your own soul is true magic, the words “GOOD JUJU” envelop a drawing of a watchful eye, a talisman used to signify protection. Handprints, beaded leaves and flowers, and language are arranged across the surface. A phrase scrawled onto a piece of masking tape affixed to the top right corner reads “I love you all completely,” the words slightly obfuscated by a dangling row of blue beads. Although a whirlwind of information is bestowed upon the viewer, there exists an intentional tension between that which lives upon the surface and that which requires more time to come to light. Those gestures are rooted in how we heal. According to german, “what is taking [us] down is the original wound,”(1) and in this current moment, we must tend to understand how to heal. For german, tending to the wound as lovingly as possible is the best way to heal.
For the cool girls, or Snaps, pops and gumball clacks
GUMBALL, or, Gloriously Underestimated Magical Bounty As Living Love. Or, An Invitation to Contemplation at the pace of One’s own Divine Soul. (2025) is a rose quartz sculpture of a human head with a pink bubble protruding from her mouth. The intricately worked visage includes beadwork and tiger’s eye stones that form miraculous locks of hair. An homage to german’s youth, GUMBALL is for the cool girls in Southern California whose defiant language of snaps, pops, and gumball clacks impressed awe and inspiration upon the artist. This early influence of subtleties carrying magnitudes is echoed in the materials list:
gemstones and minerals: tiger’s eye, onyx, obsidian, rose quartz, morganite, lapis, aragonite, citrine, agate, dyed jade, titanium heated geode, spirit quartz. Cut glass crystal, fish key chains, a love song to the Soul of it all, a house in which to grow wise in a manner with allows no violation to the being, wood, hand blown glass gumball, ceramic figurine, pink prayer beads, prayers of grace and the intimacy of loneliness giving into the knowing of deep and true wholeness, light, astroturf, joyous angelic presence, the levity of the Buddha— HA HA. Love, memories of my grandmother, plaster, plaster gauze, cardboard, obsidian lucky foot, 3-4 bags of my/the artist’s recycling, a laying on of hands and a release into the grace of being held outside of one’s own mind, joy, ceramic butterflies, the way that black girls— in my youth— could speak their own language by chewing and popping gum, beaded flowers, hope, newness, porcelain tile, slow down, it’s going to be ok.
For german, the gumball is a trojan horse, where “prayers of grace and the intimacy of loneliness giving into the knowing of deep and true wholeness” lives between pink prayer beads and light.(2)
The verso includes layers of soft pink, fleshy bulbous sacs that hold prayers, intentionally bound with red string, as well as a found mammy figurine surrounded by rose quartz and porcelain roses. The bound pink sacs equally evoke gooey, sweet bubblegum-blown bubbles and the strong odor of asafetida sacs—a pungent spice that aids in digestion. In the United States South and some parts of the Caribbean, asafetida has been worn in leather pouches around the neck as protection against evil spirits and diseases, proving that truth lives and is held within vernacular traditions passed down through generations.
Returning to our preteen bubblegum-popping protagonists emphasizes the subtle forms of communication in german’s oeuvre providing insight into what is revealed, what is concealed, and perhaps why. The gum’s undecipherable sounds conveyed meaning that existed beyond language. These early nonverbal communication networks held worlds for the artist. The introduction of double entendre created a springboard for german to develop gestures that exist slightly beyond complete legibility yet hold and carry tremendous weight.
Those gestures include talismans, embedded throughout, “holding space for that which needs to be tended to.”(3) Language scrawled upon the surfaces of the busts include words such as LOVER, and numeric sequences pointing to the artist’s interest in numerology. Protective crystals, including deep purple amethyst geodes, obsidian, and black tourmaline adorn the sculptures’ curved forms. Quartz crystals are known as master healers, and rose quartz is connected to the heart chakra, used for grief, love, and heart opening.
“For german, tending to the wound as lovingly as possible is the best way to heal.”
There are just a few places in the world where quartz crystals grow bountifully, and they include the Ouachita Mountains and Ouachita National Forest, which stretch across the Southern Plains of the places that we now call Arkansas and Oklahoma. Named for the French spelling of the Caddo word washita,(4) which translates to “good hunting ground,”(5) the Ouachita Mountains are known to have some of the largest quartz crystals in the world. german sources her crystals from Mount Ida, near the banks of the Ouachita Lake, in Arkansas (as well as from India, Pakistan, and China). In 2022 german began using rose quartz and other mineral crystals, and in 2024, she debuted a monumental, rose quartz crystal head as part of her solo exhibition at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, as part of her Gray Center Fellowship. Formed through a slow and gradual cooling of magma over thousands of years, rose quartz is known to radiate the energy of emotional healing, love, and compassion. I had the opportunity to experience the crystal culture in the southern part of the state while working as a curator for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art—which is also where I first met german—where I moved after working with the fourth edition of Prospect New Orleans’ international art triennial, Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp.
german’s intricate beadwork calls to mind the hand sewn suits of the Black Masking, or Mardi Gras, Indians. Organized based on geography (Uptown or Downtown New Orleans) and the bead style found on the suits of the “tribes,” Mardi Gras Indians embody a New Orleans African American underground tradition made public in the 20th century with many origin stories. Some speak of the traditions emerging as a form of gratitude for the care bestowed on descendants of Africans by Indigenous communities during enslavement, which led to the development of maroon communities in Southern Louisiana. Others are rooted in giving New Orleans youth an opportunity to participate in community-focused public art initiatives, or in the histories and traditions of African explorers to the Americas, or Kongolese warrior dances practiced by enslaved Africans in Congo Square on Sundays, when they were allowed to dance and congregate.(6)
The versos of bring light in through the top of your head (2025), the monumental scribble (2025) and the siddhi of the soul (2025) include remnants of found quilts, another Southern tradition and material that carries deep resonance for the artist. german’s mother was a quilter, and growing up, german and her siblings were responsible for assisting her mother in pinning together the backing, batting, and quilt top for each textile that her mother created.(7) This experience of the physicality, spirituality, and care her mother brought to creating textiles was incredibly foundational for german.(8) Her practice began with deeply engaged, community-focused public art initiatives, first gaining prevalence for Love Front Porch and ARThouse, both located in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood. Likely seeded during those formative years observing and assisting her mom in creating quilts, german’s work exemplifies a thoughtful and careful approach. Early performances on the front steps of Love Front Porch led to the full installation of ARThouse, a public art project that hosted artist residencies and community arts programming for the neighborhood, in 2014.
Material influence: The death drop
The death drop is a vogueing dance move popularized in the Black and Brown queer nightlife ballroom scene of 1970s-80s New York, including Harlem Elks Lounge and the itinerant Copacabana Nightclub,(9) in which the performer suddenly, and somehow gracefully, falls back onto the floor with their leg bent, as if falling with their final breath. The vogueing move has been popularized for the elegance that proper delivery requires by way of a staggeringly quick backwards dip, meant to mimic a quick and sudden fall to one’s death. Equally compelled by the tensions that emerge in the space between imitation and reality, german’s figures parade out on a catwalk, teetering on the brink of a dip. This moment just before the descent, froze for all time. The nuance and cultural significance of this move has also been explored in the work of german’s contemporaries, including Mark Bradford and Rashaad Newsome. Well-known for his expansive engagement with ballroom culture, Newsome expanded to working with an AI humanoid who used ballroom culture to teach decolonial workshops for Assembly, a 2022 commission for the Park Avenue Armory.(10) In his 2023 solo exhibition You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice at Hauser + Wirth, Bradford explored the death drop over the span of 50 years, through Death Drop, 2023 (2023) a life-sized sculpture of a fallen figure and, Death Drop, 1973 (1973) a Super 8 film that he directed at age 12, which is a loop of the artist falling and raising back up. Derived from real world experience, the death drop—and interpretations of it by contemporary artists—reflect the moment.
In her approach, german offers a new frame, where aesthetic choices point to the artist’s overarching themes, and distinct formal devices underscore her reminder to tend to that which is painful. sweet love, or THE HUNGER OF IT ALL IS EATING ME UP, or, ACIM lesson #28 and #31, respectively: Above all else, I want to see things differently. I am not a victim of the world I see. (2025), for example, includes a bricolage sculpture the artist has created from found objects. The legs of the sculpture are strawberry-tinted bulbous forms connected to black-painted cowrie shells lavishly draped in gold chains. The head of this fallen figure includes a nude, soft-bellied seated sculpture, head tilted back and mouth open, casually swallowing a petite, accordion-playing, porcelain statuette. The suggestion here is that by integrating that which haunts it—by tending to the wound—the seated figure is emancipated.
vanessa german’s practice includes a cacophony of influences that remain anchored in the belief and possibility of other worlds. Embedded in her busts and fallen figures are the clues, hints, and tools necessary to transform and create them. In light of recent times, with the current administration’s efforts to reframe American histories, and basic human rights being questioned and removed more quickly than the average person can maintain awareness, german’s proposition encourages us to let in the light.
“vanessa german’s practice includes a cacophony of influences that remain anchored in the belief and possibility of other worlds. Embedded in her busts and fallen figures are the clues, hints, and tools necessary to transform and create them.”
Allison Glenn is a New York-based curator and writer focusing on the intersection of art and public space, through public art and special projects, biennials and major new commissions by a wide range of contemporary artists. For over fifteen years, Glenn has been devoted to realizing ambitious and experimental exhibitions and site-specific artist projects with artists working across the globe. She is Artistic Director of The Shepherd, a three-and-a-half-acre arts campus part of the newly christened Little Village cultural district in Detroit. Glenn has been named Curator of the next Toronto Biennial of Art, opening in late 2026.
vanessa german’s artistic practice incorporates sculpture, drawing, performance, and communal ritual to embrace spiritual models for transforming human experience. Since joining Kasmin in 2021, german has presented a solo exhibition at the gallery (2022) and solo presentations at Frieze Los Angeles (2024) and the Independent Art Fair (2022). Her work is collected by museums across the country, and has been acquired by over a dozen museums since 2021. She has staged major exhibitions at the NSU Art Museum, Ft. Lauderdale, FL (2024-25); Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago (2024); The National Mall, Washington, DC (2023); Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ (2023); Mt. Holyoke Art Museum, South Hadley, MA (2022-23) and other museums across the country. She has received numerous accolades over the course of her career including a Heinz Award in 2022, and her practice has been hailed in The New York Times, Forbes, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. Her work was included in the publications Great Women Sculptors (Phaidon) and Project A Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica (Art Institute of Chicago) in 2024.
Notes
(1) Conversation with vanessa german, Thursday, April 3, 2025.
(2) Conversation with vanessa german.
(3) Conversation with vanessa german.
(4) “Origin of County Names in Oklahoma,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 2, No. 1, March, 1924. Accessed April 6, 2025.
(5) “The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture: Ouachita Mountains,” Oklahoma Historical Society. Accessed April 6, 2025.
(6) Jeroen Dewulf, “Sangamentos on Congo Square? Kongolese Warriors, Brotherhood Kings, and Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans,” in Cécile Fromont, ed., Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas (Penn State University Press, 2019). Accessed April 13, 2025.
(7) Tyler Green, “No. 570: vanessa german, Jacob Lawrence.” Modern Art Notes Podcast, October 6, 2022. 5:37
(8) Modern Art Notes Podcast, 6:00-7:00.
(9) Jos Criales Unzueta, “From Underground Subculture to Global Phenomenon: An Oral History of Ballroom Within Mainstream Culture,” Vogue Online, June 28, 2023. Accessed April 19, 2025.
(10) Stephen Vargas, “This artist made a voguing, AI humanoid that acts as a cultural archive,” Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2024, Accessed April 19, 2025.
