YUCK MY YUM
Sophie Hirsch
MAY 26 – JULY 26, 2025
Zeller van Almsick is pleased to present Yuck my Yum, the first solo exhibition at the gallery by Austrian-born artist Sophie Hirsch. Known for her materially astute and conceptually layered practice, Hirsch returns to her native city with an immersive installation that quietly unsettles the architecture of the familiar.
Unfolding on an intimate, domestic scale, Yuck my Yum resists comfort and legibility. Sculptural forms once recognizable—bastardized medical equipment, distorted nods to modernist furniture—now appear absorbed into their surroundings. In contrast to earlier presentations, where Hirsch offered anchoring references—living rooms, waiting rooms, clinical spaces—this exhibition eschews metaphor for sensation. Her materials speak with new subtlety and specificity. Railing, used prominently throughout the installation, is not a neutral element. It evokes both touch and restraint, functioning simultaneously as aid and boundary. Its soft edges suggest safety—designed to do no harm—yet outside of a public or institutional context, it takes on a more clinical, almost sterile charge. These sculptural gestures, once brightly colored and declarative, are now absorbed into a muted, contused palette. Rather than guiding the viewer, they implicate them, becoming part of an architecture that must be physically and psychologically traversed.
The title, Yuck my Yum—a colloquial phrase used to mock or undermine another’s pleasure—serves as a conceptual entry point. Hirsch confronts the vulnerability of desire, investigating how longing, comfort, and softness can be destabilized or ridiculed. Rather than sidestep this discomfort, she leans into it, constructing a world where gratification is deferred, and the act of wanting becomes its own complex, unresolved condition.
Kat Herriman