Carbon 12 is proud to announce their first participation at the 32nd edition of Art Brussels with Sara Rahbar and Ralf Ziervogel.

Both Sara Rahbar and Ralf Ziervogel are an integral part of Carbon 12’s internationally lauded represented artists. The “Lacuna” themed booth will exclusively premier unseen recent works in which their practices take a new aesthetic development.

“Lacuna” is what happens when we hear, “use your words, not your fists”, but don’t listen; when we act first and think later; it is the gap of silence from internalized trauma post and prior to violence. Ziervogel depicts pre-conflict: his minimalist geometric “lines” on gesso-ed canvas upon closer look are actually violent internal monologue, handwritten with obsessive, growing rage, the mental chaos organized through fixated repetition. Rahbar presents the after: war and industrial object-based assemblages, representing the inevitable explosion’s emptied and fragmented remains in cold decoration on flattened tarp or walls, painstakingly organized and displayed as though trying to rebuild a whole from destroyed fragments. The works hang intermingled, in conversation not only with the viewer, but with each other in a constant reminder of the cause and effects of violence.

In testament to the universally applicable message conveyed through differing mediums, the poetic tension for both artists lies not only within their honed technical execution, but what these depictions imply about the quiet, internalized states of trauma before and after.

*image (left)
© Sara Rahbar
courtesy of Carbon 12