Eve Ingalls "Out of Place and Time"
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery
This event has ended.
This body of work represents Ingalls’ most extreme investigation of the state of our environment. Her sculptural forms reveal a world in which climate change is assaulting natural and cultural boundaries. Objects, as well as life forms and processes, are left out of place, unable to perform their usual functions. Discovering and repurposing things has become necessary at every scale. For instance, on a beach almost devoid of shells because of human activity, Ingalls recently observed a hermit crab bearing a blue plastic bottle top instead of a shell as its ‘mobile second-hand home’.
Two major sculptural works highlight such significant shifts in function and purpose. In Messing with the Axis Mundi (usually defined as the vertical, spiritual axis of human existence), the axis becomes a scissor lift, a lifting mechanism normally found at
construction sites. Here it is used to raise an eight-foot square of the ocean’s surface high into the air, suggesting that humans’ careless manipulation of nature threatens to blur the boundary between sea and sky.
In Drawing Back to the Pyramid, a house, fresh off the drawing board and made astonishingly of paper two-by-fours, sinks into what might be permafrost, its original cubic form morphing into a pyramid, implying that we are in the presence of a tomb. Wry humor combined with startling surprises, a wide arc of references, and immense formal energy hold these works actively open and alive to interpretation.
Media
Schedule
from February 28, 2012 to March 24, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-03-01 from 18:00 to 20:00