Sophie Reinhold: THE END OF HERE AND NOW

PIO PICO, LA is pleased to present The End of Here and Now, the first solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist Sophie Reinhold in the United States, consisting of a group of
paintings conceived for the occasion and inspired by the city of Los Angeles.

Reinhold employs her generous tonal registers that range from the dreamlike to the
uncanny and the mordant within this cycle of canvases. The work adds up to a
travelogue that, through an expansive stylistic palate, plunges the viewer into a
narrative that confronts the artist’s scrutiny of the Western art canon and the current
condition that reconciles hyper-connectivity and disorientation.
Reinhold was born in the former East Germany, and as a child witnessed the
estranging reconfiguration of everything she knew in the process of the nation’s
reunification into a novel entity. When invited for a show in Los Angeles—both a
physical metropolis and one of the most accessible mental backdrops for the idea of
the “city” itself via the film industry—she chose to use as a starting point the
question: “Where is the centre?”
The answer is not straightforward and entails: voyages to the centre of the Earth and
up into the sky; antique cartography; Renaissance perspective grid formation; solemn
sunsets and human dials; GDR public service announcements; anthropomorphic
typography and pop art; digital speedways and the feeling of an “eternal present”;
mysterious caverns; and much more.