White Cube opens an exhibition of works by Rachel Kneebone
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Tuesday, December 3, 2024


White Cube opens an exhibition of works by Rachel Kneebone
Rachel Kneebone, Raft White Cube Masons Yard, 7 July - 4 September 2021. © Rachel Kneebone. Photo © White Cube (Stephen White).



LONDON.- White Cube is presenting ‘Raft’, an exhibition by Rachel Kneebone at Mason’s Yard, London. The porcelain sculptures and drawings featured in the show focus on themes of transformation and metamorphosis, and the material manifestation of these fluid physical and mental states.

Responding to Théodore Géricault's essential theme of the agony of physical existence, Kneebone probes the arc of human life: birth, growth, change and death. The title of the exhibition alludes to Géricault’s monumental painting The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19). A high point of French Romanticism, the painting depicts a moment of grave crisis with desperate bodies cast adrift following the wreck of a naval frigate. Kneebone’s reference to Gericault’s painting, however, goes beyond specific iconography and instead cuts across space and time, invoking contemporary concerns such as the perils of migration, the tragedy of displaced persons, but also hope in the face of despair.

Kneebone’s work is resolved through a process of creative exchange between herself and her material, between decisive acts of modelling and the elements of chance that are bound up in working with porcelain. ‘To disregard control of the material means setting things up to unfold as they will, rather than making things happen. This enables me to work beyond my limitations,’ she has commented.




In Kneebone’s sculptures, compositions emerge and dissolve into undulating masses of modelled clay. Recumbent limbs stretch out into the surrounding space in different directions, with vegetal forms interwoven and conjoined. In each, a single, smooth orb sits in contrast to these dense and intricate parts, as if anchoring the whole and forestalling collapse. While the sculptures are related through repetition of form and scale, marked compositional differences occur, these often being the outcome of the porcelain absorbing and integrating the variable tensions, splits and collapses acquired during the firing process.

Kneebone has chosen a deep blue colour for the gallery walls so that the sculptures, framed by this dark expanse, seem to be emerging from or sinking into the mud or seabed. In this way, the new work Quill (2021) appears fluid in its essence, an assemblage of elongated tendrils winding into a sculptural relief that extends and reaches outwards across the gallery wall.

In the ground floor gallery, a single large-scale sculpture, Shell (2020) hangs suspended from the ceiling. No longer bound to wall or plinth, it exemplifies the artist’s concerns with motion, weightlessness and transformation. An assemblage of cascading interwoven forms, delicate flower wreaths extend and writhe around its core, its spools of ribbon barely holding it together. Kneebone has commented that Shell ‘feels like a free form, or free-falling dissolve of form, almost like a vapour [...] an unfolding or an unravelling’.

As with all of her work, the forms of Shell exhibit a contradictory directionality, and in doing so, create a tension between its mass and its fractures and between light and shadow. Both rising and falling, Shell contains both ornate detail and areas of emptiness, so that the work is poised between its own internal resolution and potential dissolution.

Kneebone’s new series of drawings echo her process of making the sculptures, the building and removing of partial, connected and extended figurative lines. Raft I (2020) features a continuous wheel-like pattern of conjoined limbs, freely emerging as the artist rotates the paper while she draws. ‘It’s a shared way of looking, an active looking at and through things; line and shape and form and suggestion, hints or glimpses to follow, bring out or rub away. A movement to fuse things and create new form from a blurring or dissolve of boundaries,’ she has stated.










Today's News

August 9, 2021

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Jekyll and Hyde year

Exhibition at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen pays tribute to Sol LeWitt

The dirndl: a dress for past and present

San Francisco's cyclists cheer a road less traveled. Museums mourn it.

Hang-Up presents 'Game Changers: Renegade Artists Defying Convention'

White Cube opens an exhibition of works by Rachel Kneebone

Hung Liu reflects on migration in de Young's Wilsey Court

Mitchell-Innes & Nash announces the release of "Pope.L, My Kingdom for a Title"

Group show highlights landscape painting, drawing, sculpture and photography

A new welcome to the Art Gallery of New South Wales: First look at transformed civic space in Sydney

Markie Post, 'Night Court' actress, dies at 70

New online exhibition explores humanity of those living with HIV/AIDS

Smithsonian American Art Museum announces new initiative through the American Art Journal

Artists brighten walkway with installation created in collaboration with nature

Luis C Lopez-Morton of Morton Subastas joins Bidsquare's board of directors

The LA Art Show's special summer edition celebrates major success with record sales

Kelton the one-tonne wicker beltie starts Dumfries and Galloway homecoming tour

Cheshire based H&H Classics appoint Nick Bicknell as its Sales & Business Development Manager

Join a living work of art as Uniqlo Tate Play opens at Tate Modern

Cooper Hewitt's Interaction Lab launches seven prototypes to experience the Smithsonian Open Access Collection

Kool and the Gang's Dennis 'Dee Tee' Thomas dies at 70

'Reservation Dogs' uses humor, not magic, to conjure Native culture

Exhibition explores how three artists document changes in nature, culture, and crises

Nach Waxman, founder of a bookstore where foodies flock, dies at 84

IFX brokers review transparent brokers review

How Long does GameStop Take to Refund a Cancelled Order?

CHEAP PAINTING SERVICES IN SINGAPORE




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Houston Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง
Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful