Serkan Sarier’s first solo exhibition in Germany features installations and complementary paintings made onsite during a nine-week residency hosted by the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen. It draws inspiration from The Little Mermaid, a story written in 1836 by Hans Christian Andersen after he was rejected by the man he loved, as well as the artist’s own memories of rejection, feelings of otherness, and moment of transformation. As a member of a Turkish migrant family (Gastarbeiter Familie) and a German citizen, Sarier often explores the subaltern in his work; in the case of They Eat Their Young, he does this through mythical bodies that are not only trapped and isolated, but removed (both socially and geographically) from each other and the observer. It is a hybrid of classical Greek and Roman sculptural references combined with the artist’s own cultural heritage. An exploration made relevant by the scores of younger immigrant generations currently seeking asylum in the Western world.

Shaped by the environment of both his family’s culture and everyday life in Hanau, Serkan expresses this juxtaposition in his use of color and materials. The pervasive and suffocating nature of humankind is made visceral by way of large rocks drenched in iridescent car paint, the weight of them supported by metal grates that line industrial plastic containers; a proper plinth for a rodent being studied in a lab. Great care is taken in the details of faces, gloves and feet. Yet, the genitalia remain vague, if not feminine, on otherwise masculine bodies. One figure dons a large pair of rubber gloves identical to those worn by the artist’s father years ago when he was of working age, its face composed of a deflated rubber mask is squashed and frozen in a moment of anguish. Mannequins made from a soft, rubbery material bring a haunting humanity to wholly cold forms. Each sculpture is immersed in a fresh new coat of car paint that harkens Western Germany from the 1950s through the 1970s, an era when most Turkish immigrants were employed by the automobile industry. They glitter with the promise of assimilation: an opportunity to provide for one’s family in a new Western life.

They Eat Their Young is on view through September 20 @ Stiftung Reinbeckhallen Reinbeckstr. 17, 12459 Berlin. text by Mimi Krtinić Rončević, photographs courtesy of the gallery