Farewell To Flesh

The exhibition A Farewell to Flesh manifests an otherworldly experience of being. It is a stripping away, a reckoning, and a revealing of the sublime biotic experience—attempting to dig into the empty space between life and death.

 

This all-white installation consists of approximately twenty-five large fibre, plastic, and glass biomorphic forms. The contrasting soft and hard sculptures work together as an active ecosystem, delicately balanced. All are suspended over or emerging from a topographical bed of salt formed into islands and pathways. Under the salt islands thick clear plastic is spread out to protect flooring, but is hidden from view.  There are also five wall-mounted sculptures in the installation, to help break up the space and connect the various components.

 

The installation thus occupies various levels and spaces within a gallery. Some works hang from the ceiling; others are partially hidden under the salt island. How they relate is in direct response to the spatial characteristics of the gallery itself. The white-on-white forms and salt environment together create an intense experience of immersion for the viewer.

Each of the individual sculptures that make up the installation was inspired in part by the microscopic patterns and microbial beings that exist within the human body: the symbiotic relationship of organisms living, dying, and regenerating within each one of us.

To create these works, I turned my studio into an embryotic laboratory for over one year. Hunks of wool were hung from hooks over a bed of salt in my studio. I sprayed the forms daily with saline solution and created the resulting felted works in space, climbing up and down a ladder.

I work in an immersive way, shaping the installation to the space. Because of the natural flexibility and morph-ability of the felt material I use, this exhibition is unique to each new place it occupies. When installing the work, I respond to the structure of the gallery space and use the sculptures’ physical attributes similarly to drawing markings—as gestures, and dynamic lines across a plane surface. Gravity pulls objects toward the floor, hooks stretch wool like taught skin across space, and cords anchor biotic forms, pulling and stretching in different directions.

 

One individual piece also slowly transforms within the space. “White Whale” includes a bucket of egg-shaped, white, water-filled balloons nestled under its scaffold structure; these slowly leak water into a bucket over time. The hollow form of the whale too is filled with inflated balloons that slowly leak air as the exhibit unfolds. This creates a body that slowly, almost imperceptibly, changes its form and eventually becomes a skin around the scaffolding that supports it. This process highlights the longevity of human-made materials over biotic form.

 

The eye and body of the viewer is encouraged to move around the space, and the result is a truly immersive and reflective experience: both sacred and corrupt, sensuous and formidable.