Martos Gallery is pleased to present Winter, summer together, a solo exhibition of a new series by Agnes Lux. This exhibition features four large-scale collages of layered ready-to-send postcards altered with phosphorescent paint. After painting and numbering the postcards according to her precisely devised system, Lux mails them to herself through the United States Postal Service, subjecting these objects of communication to variation and chance. Once collected and arranged, the postcards serve as building blocks for her abstract, deeply coded compositions.
The phosphorescent paint used on the surface of the cards surface further illustrates Lux’s approach to encrypting information and objects. On one level, the phosphorescent hue relates to Lux’s primary material—postcards. During the 1950s and ‘60s in Europe, phosphorescent strips were commonly added to postal stamps so that machines could easily locate where to place the registration mark on the piece of mail. To Lux, this device corresponds to her methodology, as both rely on reading what is not readily apparent to the human eye in order to decode the objects with which they work.
The phosphorescent paint is also a kind of storage receptacle, as the material retains light energy which gets emitted in the darkness, causing the glowing effect. The works in Winter, summer together appear differently depending on the level of light in the surrounding environment. This manifests both variation and interconnectivity.
Agnes Lux was born in 1983 in Solingen, Germany. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Lux has exhibited extensively in the United States and throughout Europe. Recent solo presentations include Label the Shapes, Martos Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; To Whom It SpazioA, Pistoia, Italy; Aux quatre vents, Martos Gallery, New York, NY.