In Rachel de Joode’s first solo exhibition in a European gallery she continues her investigation into ‘Things’. Puddles, Meteorites, A Surface of a Dinosaur Bone, Bronze, Grey Goo, Fat, Stone and Human Skin all have an aesthetic calling to de Joode. These things are explored for their material agency, not only their communication with us but with each other and their context.
Skin plays a central role in ‘The Molten Inner Core’. The average human adult carries roughly 2kg of dead skin, the surface of which is shedding every two weeks. This perceptual layer is therefore useful to de Joode when understanding a physical interaction between things, and investigating when a thing changes form.
Works ‘White Pedestal Thing’ and ‘Sculpted Human Skin In Rock’ explore the co-dependance and understanding of pedestal and sculpture. Visibly handmade clay miniatures act as pedestal and sculpture, while abstract forms in human-scale are flat. These two-dimensional shapes are covered in ‘sculpted’ photographs of skin and stand in solid rock. ‘Achilles’ depicts the artists heel and is printed the height of the artist. Although photography is used as representation, each object is acting in a non-hierarchical grouping. A print, the ink, the frame, the floor, a pedestal, a sculpture and even the artist herself retains a potential to become (melt into) another thing.
Courtesy: the Artist; Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin.