Ceremony. Sabine Finkenauer

In Ceremony Sabine Finkenauer offers an approach to the idea of ritual through her characteristic language: a vocabulary of simple forms, refined over years of work, which here unfolds as an open system of signs. The title evokes a celebratory dimension, not in its most solemn sense, but as a form of attention to the everyday. In this context, a ritual can be understood as a symbolic action that not only organizes gestures and time, but also creates community. Faced with the contemporary age, marked by an overabundance of communication yet fragile in its bonds, the ritual introduces a different mode of relation based on recognition and shared experience.

At the core of this exhibition is an “alphabet” of symbols: small recurring forms in her work that, brought together, function as a kind of legend or visual code. These minimal units, which appear both in her drawings and across the floor and walls of the gallery, are arranged in sequences and patterns that suggest an order. It is not an imposed order, but one built through repetition, variation, and play. As in every ritual, there are rules (though not always explicit) that structure the experience.

At the same time, the artist conceives Ceremony as a reflection on the contemporary loss of rituals. In contrast to a present shaped by immediacy and banalization, Finkenauer’s work emphasizes the importance of giving form to gestures, objects, and shared time. As in the Japanese tea ceremony or in the care with which a gift is wrapped, attention to detail and form becomes a meaningful act in itself.