LONDON.- Massimo De Carlo gallery is presenting Hole, a new exhibition by the American artist Kaari Upson. In her practice Upson has investigated and reflected upon the notions of propriety and displacement, voyeurism and exhibitionism.

The ground floor of the exhibition is intended as a further exploration of a key topic of Upson’s work: domesticity. The works on show are casts of every day household objects such as sofas and dustbins: each object has been casts a number of times, and each time it is cast it appearance becomes more dishevelled and uncanny.

By documenting the metamorphosis of these items from familiar domestic objects to unfamiliar Upson highlights the connection between object-hood and the life story of each of us viewers, as if questioning our journey into decay.

Moreover, transformation is key in the new body of work presented by Kaari Upson on the lower ground floor of the gallery. Here, as in her notorious Larry Project, Upson was drawn to a figure which becomes a new vessel and medium that allows her to explore an array of topics. In this new series the artist, through the repetitive depiction, on wallpaper and on canvas, of Angelina Jolie’s famous pout investigates bodily changes and femininity: Jolie is intended here as a public persona whom embodies the media documented journey from sinner to saint, from bad girl to perfect mother and advocate of humanitarian causes.

The sculptures, abstract portraits of Angelina Jolie, touch on a more delicate subject: the holes in the boards represent the female organs of Jolie’s that had been speculated about in the media. The melancholic emptiness of these holes is requited by the strong metal-like appearance of the sculpture itself where the female body reads as a caryatid, sustaining the weight of its own changes.

Hole is an introspective journey into the lives of our bodies and our possession, that each of us can relate to: Upson, through her work, questions the journey in itself but also helps us look for the difference between the hole and the whole.

Kaari Upson was born in San Bernardino, California, in 1972 and lives in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include: The Los Angeles Project , UCCA, Beijing, China (2014); One On One, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, USA (2010), Hammer Projects, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2007); The Larry Project, Chapter 2: The Honeymoon Period, D301 Gallery; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA (2007).

Group shows include: Sleepless: The Bed in History and Contemporary Art, 21er Haus, Vienna, Austria (2015); Second Chances, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2015); Procession, CAPC Musèe d'art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France (2014); Inner Journeys, Maison Particulière Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium (2013); Test Pattern, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2013); The Residue of Memory, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2012); American Exuberance, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2011); George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown), MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, USA (2011); Involuntary, Ford Project, New York, USA (2011); Nine Lives, curated by Ali Subotnick at the Hammer Museum in California (2009); Sack of Bones, curated by Ellen Langan and Blair Taylor for Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2008).