Sven Sachsalber paints, cuts, and sews canvas into facsimiles of the front halves of retro racing suits, stitched onto blank canvases and stretched (to 68 x 40"). The crumpled, empty suits pop from the white field as they sink into it, invisible (immaterial, represented only by their uniform) racers submerged in the snow. A series of six hangs on a long white wall that suffuses with the paintings' edges. Five are safety yellow and spotted with green, black, white, red emblems of corporate sponsors and round holes that reveal the white of the canvas below, snow collected from above; one a red, white and black sunburst drawn with expressionist bravado, "Saeco macchine per caffè" printed in negative space. The former paintings portray the cheese suits of the mid-90s Swiss downhill team; the latter is a portrait of the famous skinless skin suit of Italian cyclist Mario Cipollini. The series is spaced such that between the second and third paintings an additional one appears to be missing, a seventh skier submerged yet deeper. The spacing composes a strangely syntactic rhythm, the crumpled shapes of the suits becoming illegible hieroglyphs remembered upon my computer screen. They hang in an empty gallery, waiting to be seen.
An abrupt stop, and the skiers crashed. From the chairlift you call it a yard sale, yell it at people all splayed out below in the snow with their left ski halfway up the mountain and their right one halfway down.
The installation is titled
Bacon and Cheese because that is what the race suits look like at a glance, sliced Swiss cheese and a stripy strip of ham laid out for display, preserved in the cold white box. Stillness obscures the predilection for speed. Commodities plead to be bought, consumed, given the freedom of context.
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