Siobhán Hapaska

Post-Fair Paris
79 Rue du Temple, 75003
19 to 24 October

Presenting new a series of new wall mounted sculptures along side a significant floor based work from 2016

Meticulously constructed from twisted concrete cloth, resin, jesmonite and stainless steel, the new sculptures occupy a space between the figurative and the abstract. Concrete cloth — a material associated with reinforcement, containment and emergency construction — is manipulated by Hapaska into structures that appear bodily. Glass-like forms emerge from the folds or grow across their surfaces: some red, resembling enlarged blood platelets, others black, like dark lenses opening onto another infinite universe.
 
At the heart of Hapaska’s practice is a deep and sustained consideration of the complex nature of human relationships. Her sculptures, wall works and large-scale kinetic installations articulate a suspended state: creatures and forms held in tension or equilibrium between powerful opposites. Across her work, freedom and constraint, movement and stagnation, nurture and neglect, violence and surrender are brought into uneasy proximity.
 
Touch was created as part of a series of sculptures and wall works made for Hapaska’s 2016 solo show at Kerlin Gallery. The work draws attention to formative contradictions within society, while reflecting the artist’s restless experimental approach to material and form.  Precisely cut and immaculately polished oak is set in precarious compositional balance against fibreglass, stainless steel and synthetic fur. Hapaska digs out the evocative presence of her material, its sensuous texture, surface response to light and pliability or rigidity. Yet these free-standing sculptural intimations come muted by a “concrete cloth” devised for the swift construction of makeshift dwellings. Throughout Hapaska’s practice, stark contrasts are deliberately brought together: matt concrete against high-gloss fibreglass; the organic against the synthetic; monochrome against intense colour; the hard against the soft; and the heavy alongside the light.
 
In this presentation, two materials dominate: concrete cloth and acrylic resin. Both are relatively recent products developed for the building industry. Designed to allow for rapid construction, these materials can also be used in times of crisis to create emergency structures and dwellings. Replacing or reimagining traditional materials such as glass and stone, they embody contemporary engineering solutions. Hapaska characteristically reappropriates these industrial materials, forcing them into a new life as sculptural form. In doing so, they evoke the mass displacement of refugees and those forced to escape natural disasters, while raising questions around protection, containment and survival in an increasingly precarious world.

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