South likes: Adriano Costa, Sam Falls, Samara Scott, Michael E. Smith at Zabludowicz Collection, London

South likes: Adriano Costa, Sam Falls, Samara Scott, Michael E. Smith at Zabludowicz Collection, London
Adriano Costa, Sam Falls, Samara Scott, Michael E. Smith
Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK
26 June – 10 August, 2014

Text by Klea Charitou

Four solo exhibitions by international sculptors Adriano Costa, Sam Falls, Samara Scott and Michael E. Smith are presented this summer in the former Methodist Chapel, where Zabludowicz Collection houses its distinctive collection in North London. Despite their different artistic backgrounds and the disparate techniques and materials, all the four artists engage in a phenomenological approach of the human body and its fragility. At the same time, essential characteristics of art movements such as Arte Povera, Land Art and Minimalism recur and intertwine with current metaphors, narrations, and with the process of generating new meanings.

In Adriano Costa’s installation, From My Body Comes, Through Your Body Goes, an enigmatic composition by different materials, shapes, textures and colours broadens the boundary between art and non-art, precious and valueless, while what is considered as our commodity culture is transformed into a symbolic universe. The playful nature and the intuitive approach of his works, together with the geographical and historical references to Latin America, indicate an uncertain terrain, very close to the rhythm of music, entering a silent relationship with the residual domestic traces of the Middle Gallery. As a corollary of Sam Falls’ multidisciplinary background, a dialectic between different materials and techniques is attempted at the centre-pieces of his solo-presentation, made of copper, marble and powder coated aluminium. The large-scale sculptures, which begin as small folded paper models, combine the concept of monumental and permanent, emanating at the same time the sense of a potential change and erosion—similarly Falls did in his former project in Zabludowicz residency program in Finland, where some hand-dyed fabrics exposed to the natural elements created new objects and photographic records of the various environmental conditions. Samara Scott’s glass ‘tapestries’ describe our “urban spirituality”, appearing as a sort of “sentimental material investigation” and lifting textures and colours directly from the everyday images. Last but not least, Michael E. Smith’s sculptural installation relies on a provoking placement of ruined found objects on the mezzanine, the small side rooms and the back corridors of the venue, creating an ambiguous environment characterised by awkwardness and dark humour.

http://www.zabludowiczcollection.com/london/exhibitions