The flexibility to see one thing as what it’s not—to see a well-known object or sample in in any other case random or unrelated objects—is an expertise referred to as pareidolia. The exhibition “Parallel Manipulation” attracts our consideration in the direction of this phenomenon. B. Ingrid Olson and Clémence de la Tour du Pin each root their inventive processes in utilizing discovered objects sourced from their environment and resituating them in order that nothing is absolutely what it appears to be. When accumulating discovered parts, the artists acknowledge the item’s chance to grow to be one thing new. By way of recontextualization, reconstruction, and disfiguration of the issues that Olson and la tour du pin discover, the 2 artists instigate a dialog about potentiality. On this malleable system, a type can exist for and by itself however all the time holds the capability to remodel into a brand new component as soon as faraway from its unique operate and worth. The viewer is, due to this fact, requested to apply a double gaze: to see and acknowledge the work as its supply, the uncooked materials, after which re-examine it, permitting for it to grow to be one thing solely else.

Olson’s Umbra sequence options photographic works that image provisional preparations which were arrange briefly on her studio ground. The assembled eventualities incorporate handmade props, uncooked supplies, discarded objects, and fragments from her earlier sculptural works. These advert hoc compositions give rise to summary representations of each inside and exterior physique components, transfiguring disparate parts into figurative references by way of their collective interplay. Captured throughout the late afternoon with the solar casting robust mild at acute angles, the extreme illumination accentuates the interaction of shadows. Olson fastidiously adjusts and revises the compositions, taking a number of photographs, because the solar’s motion alters the shadows’ places and intensities. Olson has mentioned in regards to the Umbra sequence that, “the varieties themselves are sometimes not the topic of the picture—however reasonably the robust shadows that fall off of them, occlude them, or encompass them.” The works painting fragments of somebody’s corporeal realm, but this corpus is subtle and by no means proven as one full entire. The disfigured limbs, stuffed cavities, irregular strains, and transferring boundaries in these photographs all work to decompose the concept that the singular time period “the physique” can suffice to embody the complexities inherent to being a person particular person with a specific physique. To acknowledge the specificity of every physique is to additionally acknowledge the capability of those our bodies to continuously change and rework.

In Sunshades for an Expanded Subject, la Tour du Pin repurposes Nineteenth-century silk umbrellas for kids by positioning them vertically on the gallery partitions. These objects had been collected from rural areas close to her hometown in France. The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes area holds a major industrial historical past associated to textile manufacturing, and the umbrella was as soon as intently tied to France’s opulence. The umbrella’s protecting operate, like a barrier between our pores and skin and the weather, exposes our vulnerabilities: as if with out overlaying, our dermis might peel off or soften away. Nonetheless, in Sunshades for an Expanded Subject, the roles are reversed. These umbrellas, initially adorned with silk or cotton tassels, now bear the indicators of weathering, mould, and parasitic infestations. La Tour du Pin meticulously preserves the intricate particulars that narrate their previous lives, making solely minor alterations resembling including a thread or button and making cuts on the floor. In being estranged from their unique utilitarian function, they’re liberated from an existence of performance and reworked into indicators on a wall.

The Enlargers are a sequence of discovered objects that Olson has left untouched—except for altering them to be wall-mounted— permitting for the divots and marks that point out their former use to stay on their floor. The objects are comprised of high-speed metal, within the type of sharp conical factors which can be used to enlarge holes and bore into surfaces. The location of those punctuations throughout the gallery partitions imposes an interplay with a violent undertone. Geared toward our eyes, navels, and orifices, as if they might pierce into us if we come too shut. Concurrently, the Enlargers’ perceived power is rendered impartial, and even humorous when contemplating the comparatively small scale and ornamental, nearly Baroque element of the flanges radiating throughout the varieties. However, proximity stays intimidating, calling for an indirect or distanced viewing expertise. The bodily hole reenters the sphere when studying the items by way of their titles. Whereas the Enlargers are arrow-like punctuations with a transparent course, their titles break down this linear scheme. These invisible (however nonetheless hooked up) phrases diffuse and misplace the crafted course of the bodily works. Olson performs with the blurriness and non-specificity of this language inflicting a puncture between the item’s unique and current nature. In consequence, the works level away from themselves and again on the viewer.

La Tour du Pin’s Research for Stricture sequence of pencil drawings explores 18th-century sport tables. Focusing particularly on Tric Trac tables, these preparatory drawings reveal a fascination with the recessed sport board and picket trim which allude to an inward-turning floor. The phrase “stricture” is critical in each the medical and figurative sense. In medication, it refers back to the irregular narrowing of a bodily canal; whereas figuratively talking it represents limitations or legal guidelines. These meanings depict a bodily constriction inside inflexible organic features or cultural norms. La Tour du Pin displays on themes of constraint by capturing the expertise of being entangled inside a system of guidelines. The absence of pawns intensifies the expertise of entrapment. However, by remodeling these video games into aerial chook’s-eye views of architectural planes, la Tour du Pin exposes patterns that concurrently induce and free themselves from their very own restrictive system.

—Mela Miekus

at Wschód, Warsaw
till September 23, 2023