Kasmin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the London-based, Stockholm-born artist Sara Anstis titled Small Works, featuring a recent series of intimately scaled pastels. Anstis’s seductive renderings are suffused with subjectivity, depicting dream-like scenes of figures amid spare yet evocative environments. Across her compositions, Anstis’s method of storytelling is marked by the absence of a beginning or an end—her subjects appear caught in the act. Pulling from an array of literary and art historical references, the artist’s interpretations of ancient tales permeate the collection of works on view. The ambiguous motives that lie at the heart of Anstis’s figures strike a balance between detachment and reliance, a domain where touching and embracing is equally met with a reserved coolness. The artist’s protagonists share an aesthetic quality to those in illuminated manuscripts, arriving to the page in media res—existing in the very center of the narrative. Executed in silken gradients of earthen hued pastel, embedded deep into the surface of the paper by the artist’s fingers, the tactility of Anstis’s works is heightened by embroidered passages sewn into the otherwise smooth surface.
Accompanying the exhibition is a newly commissioned short story, Dam’s Island, written by author, playwright, and previous collaborator Vida Adamczewski for a special edition publication by Kasmin Books. Known for her inventive stylistic approach to prose, Adamczewski engages with a network of vivid and compelling narratives derived from Anstis’s world, transforming the artist’s compositions into living, speaking beings.
