Elf House

“Three elves came and led her to a hollow mountain where the little people lived. Everything there was small, but more ornate and splendid than can be described.”

Excerpted from The Elves (Second Tale) by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, Translated by D. L. Ashliman

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Marta is delighted to present Elf House, the inaugural solo exhibition by A History of Frogs (Antonia Pinter and Chase Biado). A long-present entity in Marta’s orbit, the colloquially-known ‘AHOF’ first exhibited work on behalf of the group exhibition Under/Over (2020), and most recently was part of the gallery’s showcase at Frieze Los Angeles (2022).

For this new body of work, A History of Frogs complements previous investigations into the self-designated Goblin Baroque and Marsupial Gothic with a classification the duo have internally dubbed Folk Elf. The collection of domestically-scaled objects, sculptures, and drawings present in the exhibition questions the home-space by creating forms through the lens of the so-called Elf mind. For Pinter and Biado, this exercise in non-human thinking allows for the production of works that trade traditional industrial signifiers in favor of archaeological ones. These items—collectibles, even—are variously cast, drawn, and molded with the embrace of imperfection, so that the artists’ hands are eternally present in the plastic decisions of creature-logic.