Zusammenhang, Gelande and Frau mit Kopftuch

For this New York exhibition in which I showed 3 pieces the international artist and curator Matthew Higgs brought 19 emerging and established artists together.

Citing contradictory and deconstructive impulses in recent art, Higgs referenced artists whose work plays with or otherwise upsets the modernist art historical canon, citing, for example, Bataille’s 'informe', a contemporary sense of unease, and a tension between the organic and inorganic. My own work makes a contribution in all these areas, particularly in its use of vernacular materials, its references to craft and to imperfection, and the way it provides evidence of gesture and the work of the hand. It reframes and rearticulates the concerns of an earlier generation of artists such as Dubuffet in a post-modern context.

My largest piece, ‘Zusammenhang’, was a web-like installation using organic materials such as wool, stones and paint, assembled by crochet, knitting and knots. Its tensile structure was fragile: twigs were often precariously balanced in leather. The work was predicated on both literal and metaphysical balance, and the possibility of its opposite. ‘Gelände’ used flesh coloured wool crocheted into an abstract, mountain-like landscape linked with twigs and bits of copper mounted on a blue plaster plinth on an ironing board. ‘Frau mit Kopftuch’, in plaster, paint, wood and leather depicted an ambiguous creature, neither human nor animal, hatching eggs.

All 3 pieces were bought by well-known US collectors, the largest, ‘Zusammenhang’, by DIA, a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts foundation based in New York that owns one of the most influential collections in the USA and, arguably, the world.

See the 3-page essay by Matthew Higgs in the 28-page exhibition catalogue with a colour illustration of 'Zusammenhang'. Photographs of the other 2 pieces are in my evidence portfolio.