Until 26 January 2019 Mat Collishaw presents The Grinders Cease, a solo exhibition at Blain|Southern Berlin. The exhibition brings together new and recent works by the artist and features sculpture, photography, painting and installation pieces.

The Grinders Cease is an examination of the vanitas. Vanitas paintings traditionally depict collections of objects whose personal and cultural significance contrasts with their lack of life. The Vanitas encourages reflection on the transience of life, the inevitability of death, and the futility of worldly possessions. The concept of vanitas was introduced in the King James Bible, Ecclesiastices 12:3, from which the title of the exhibition is derived.

Mat Collishaw, Albion, 2017

The newest work in the exhibition is the 2018 piece Colombine, which animates the 1526 Albrecht Durer painting of the same name. Durer’s wild, poisonous plant is uncannily alive, communicating the transience of life.

Other works in The Grinders Cease include Albion, Collishaw’s laser-scanned image projection of a ghostly white oak which represents illusory life while also alluding to idealised concepts of Englishness, and Last Meal on Death Row, Texas, which presents photographs of death row meals in the style of Flemish still life paintings.

The Black Mirror Works is a photographic series which captures and animates figures behind a surveillance mirror, while the impressive 3D zoetrope sculpture Seria Ludo spins to reveal a scene of frenzied, orgiastic debauchery. Partygoers are forced through the motions; they are not alive, yet they move with no sign of stopping.

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The Grinders Cease is on display at Blain Southern, Potsdamer Straße 77-87, 10785 Berlin until 26 January 2019.