‘A Waking Dream’, Jan Eric Visser & Tatiana Wolska at Hammersmith

HS Projects, in collaboration with l’étrangère, is delighted to present ‘A Waking Dream’, an exhibition of works by Rotterdam-based artist Jan Eric Visser and Brussels-based artist Tatiana Wolska. 

The exhibition, inspired by John Keats’ poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, explores ideas around themes of nature, transience and finitude and references environmental and ecological concerns, such as the climate crisis, waste, resource depletion and overconsumption. 

Visser is known for creating abstract sculptures using his personal everyday inorganic household waste. Since 1987 he has been exploring an ecologically driven aesthetic respectful of earth’s resources and the cycle of nature and life. His sculptures are the result of a meditative process, creating new shapes by assembling waste materials and wrapping them in recycled paper pulp. Once impregnated with wax, such as votive candle residue, and softly polished, the objects take on a new identity. 

Visser’s sculptures often take the form of enigmatic figures, hovering mysteriously somewhere between humanoid and abstract while the crates, which are an integral part of his work, have been referred to as ‘unique boxes made by himself that fit ‘like a second skin’ and evoke a new birth” (Kees Rood, A Way of Life, of 1996).  

Describing herself a ‘junk collector’, Wolska uses found, often discarded industrial waste materials such as plastic bottles, salvaged timber, rusty nails and foam from old mattresses and ‘gives them a new life’. She transforms these humble materials into seductive poetic, biomorphic sculptures which often confront or enter into a dialogue with the environment and architecture. 

Wolska’s work acts to remind us of our responsibility to consider our consumption, the materials we waste and the long-term impact of our behaviour on our planet. An economy of means and simplicity of gesture are the foundation of her sculptural work. Her slow and painstaking practice sublimates the simplicity of the materials—recycled waste materials, always—in order to bring out their poetry.

The exhibition has been supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands.

‘A Waking Dream’ is at 12 Hammersmith Grove from March 2022 to July 2022.

 

 

 

‘A Waking Dream’, Jan Eric Visser & Tatiana Wolska at Victoria

HS Projects, in collaboration with l’étrangère, is delighted to present ‘A Waking Dream’, an exhibition of works by Rotterdam-based artist Jan Eric Visser and Brussels-based artist Tatiana Wolska. 

The exhibition, inspired by John Keats’ poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, explores ideas around themes of nature, transience and finitude and references environmental and ecological concerns, such as the climate crisis, waste, resource depletion and overconsumption. 

Visser is known for creating abstract sculptures using his personal everyday inorganic household waste. Since 1987 he has been exploring an ecologically driven aesthetic respectful of earth’s resources and the cycle of nature and life. His sculptures are the result of a meditative process, creating new shapes by assembling waste materials and wrapping them in recycled paper pulp. Once impregnated with wax, such as votive candle residue, and softly polished, the objects take on a new identity. 

Visser’s sculptures often take the form of enigmatic figures, hovering mysteriously somewhere between humanoid and abstract while the crates, which are an integral part of his work, have been referred to as ‘unique boxes made by himself that fit ‘like a second skin’ and evoke a new birth” (Kees Rood, A Way of Life, of 1996).  

Describing herself a ‘junk collector’, Wolska uses found, often discarded industrial waste materials such as plastic bottles, salvaged timber, rusty nails and foam from old mattresses and ‘gives them a new life’. She transforms these humble materials into seductive poetic, biomorphic sculptures which often confront or enter into a dialogue with the environment and architecture. 

Wolska’s work acts to remind us of our responsibility to consider our consumption, the materials we waste and the long-term impact of our behaviour on our planet. An economy of means and simplicity of gesture are the foundation of her sculptural work. Her slow and painstaking practice sublimates the simplicity of the materials—recycled waste materials, always—in order to bring out their poetry.

The exhibition has been supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands.

‘A Waking Dream’ is at Howick Place from December 2021 to March 2022.

 

 

‘Pah-d’-Bah’, Olivia Bax

HS Projects is delighted to present ‘Pah-d’-Bah’, an exhibition of recent and new work by the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2019/2020 recipient, Olivia Bax.

The title of the exhibition is after a new sculpture Bax has specifically made for 5 Howick Place and is the pronounced sound of Pas de Basque, a term for a ballet step that is also used in Scottish Country dancing. It is often the initial move when a pair of dancers first meet, an appropriate reference for post-lockdown. Both dancers move to the right, then to the left as they progress through the dance.

‘Pah-d’-Bah’, 2021 was made to follow a horizontal plane, restricted in certain directions, it had to follow set dimensions. The openings in the pipes suggest places where liquid or a substance could fall or be collected. The colour tone is a new development, trying to emphasise where material might move or rest.

Olivia Bax’s work, though it sometimes references street furniture and other public spaces, is asymmetrical, wonky and bulbous. Her sculptures play with the relationship between public and private, inside and out, forming organic cavities that are also frames, making structures whose underneaths and insides are often on show, inviting the viewer to walk around, explore and peer in and through the work’s windows and crevices – to dream perhaps of nesting within. Deliberately questioning and confrontational, the shapes are problematic. There are sculptures within sculptures and mysterious embedded narratives.

By the window, ’Kingpin’, 2020 is Bax’s largest and most ambitious sculpture to date. A horizontal plane is pitted with holes, which dissolve into generous cavities or erupt into funnels. An irregular bulbous shape appears to be mutating. Bars feed into tubes, parts pivot, and fragments rest. Handles have been added for assistance and bright yellow vertical stands provide essential support. ‘Kingpin’ challenges the idea of a self-contained, free standing sculpture; its limits have been considered, its boundaries tested.

Nearby, ’Juicer’ (2020) is a product of distillation, of a slow transmutation of materials; which becomes, Bax says, ‘activated’ by our gaze, by our movement around it, while conversely retaining a sense of secrecy, of something invisibly at work within. According to Muriel Zagha, ’Juicer’ suggests at once a sewing table, a desk, a piece of industrial or domestic machinery and connected to it, an umbrella stand or golf bag.

Bax is known for using materials such as steel, chicken wire and a generated paper pulp, consisting of discarded newspapers and castaway household paint. She is guided by an interest in the process and physicality of construction. This is evident in the material she employs and the visual language and form of her sculptures. The texture speaks of the work’s history, revealing the process of forming the works.

’Monkey Cups’, 2018 is about balance and poise – each part provides the weight and support needed to hold the next. The title of the work is borrowed from a vessel-like plant and started a long body of work exploring containing, supporting and providing. Made with hand generated paper pulp, using recycled newspaper and discarded household paint; the vessels were made to house each other – like a Russian doll – in order to take minimum space in storage, and maximum space when presented.

‘Pah-d’-Bah’ is at Howick Place from July to December 2021.