Review of Making Something Your Own

The first impression when you get into the gallery and meet suddenly these monumental figures is that of surprise. What are these classicism busts doing standing up on those heavy unrefined structures?

As I approached their faces, the connection came straightaway. I was staring at them, beholding their expressions when spontaneously I found myself sharing a secret moment with them. Looking at their features and neatness of the style, I immediately found their relationship with the past. The classicism of Greek or Roman sculpture, the link with the portrait bust, the materiality of the pieces.

Nevertheless nothing could be further from classic’s inner calm and balance than what these faces are trying to communicate with us.

It is not about looking at the past, trying to improve its perfection, as the Italian sculptor Canova wanted, but about modifying it. Hollows instead of eyes, open mouths, twisted shapes and melancholic expressions, they seem to be in the middle of a process trying to tell us something, asking for help before they vanish.

The woman bodily figure is becoming tangled trying to find her beginning and her end, and the man with disabled limbs can’t stop shouting with the hope of being heard. Something is happening but we don’t know what it is. Mystery, confusion, disorientation.
The idea of process is clearly depicted on the materials as well.
Some of the marble surfaces are smooth and polished whereas other are irregular, as if they hadn’t been finished.

The plinths are the essential part of the sculpture; without them, the busts would have been good sculptures, but with nothing new to show. These bases, full of lumps and bare spots where the wood shows through, enhance the figures and emphasise their dignity, letting us know that the past hasn’t been forgotten and still occupies a privileged place in contemporary art.

Some stands seem to have an underlining religious sense that illuminates the gravity of the statues. The woman’s head is over an imposing cross while the male bust looks as if he is resting on an altar. Are they heathen divinities placed on catholic tables? Pedestals bring modernity and create the difference even though the transition is subtle thanks to the warm colours. They provide continuity between the plinths and the figures allowing a place for unity among so much discord.

For me, this exhibition is all about contrast and conciliation of opposites: marble-wood, smooth-roughness, modern-traditional, heathendom- Christianity, subtle-stark, unity-rupture, materiality-spirituality…But above all, these sculptures are talking about past and present holding hands.