MACHO AMORE ROMA

Sarah Ortmeyer

Following her exhibition trilogy on chess at SMAK in Gent, Wittgenstein House in Vienna and Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv, Sarah Ortmeyer is showing a series of female chess grandmasters and world champions. Facing the windows of three successive rooms at Istituto Svizzero are 11 chessboard paintings, portraits of the best international players. Susan Polgar in blue (SUSAN I–V), Alexandra Kosteniuk in red (ALEXANDRA I–IV) and Natalia Pogonina (NATALIA I–III) shining in white. The MACHO AMORE series shown in Rome draws from Ortmeyer’s work GRANDMASTERS WORLD CHAMPIONS, large scale prints of blushing portraits of the most successful international female chess players making love to the camera (GRANDMASTER I–XII and WORLD CHAMPION I–IX). In contrast to the previous work – in which the identity of the lascivious sportswomen remained undisclosed – this ongoing series portrays each player as an individual character piece, in the spirit of Destiny’s Child: say my name, say my name… .

Sarah Ortmeyer is a graduate of Städelschule, Frankfurt and lives in Vienna. Her work has been exhibited at institutions worldwide, most recently at MoMA PS1 (New York); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Tel Aviv); Swiss Institute, (New York); Belvedere, 21er Haus (Vienna); Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw); MAK Center (Los Angeles); Palais de Tokyo (Paris); KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin); and Stedelijk Museum Bureau (Amsterdam).

She has published on a range of subjects, such as: Chess and Working Class (Springer, Vienna); The Chasing of Shiloh Jolie–Pitt as a Boy (Cura, Rome); The Wittgenstein House (Gruner + Jahr, Hamburg) and Volvo Car Repair (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne).