The Wallis Gallery & Rassa Montaser present NothingEverTouches, an experiential exhibition in two (connected) parts, curated by Ross McNicol and consisting of work by Eloise Fornieles, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Olympia Scarry and Amelia Newton Whitelaw. This visceral exhibition brings together new works that unearth enchanting experiences of the physical.

 

Physics demonstrates that nothing ever ‘really’ touches. But what are the ramifications of this? We have all experienced touch, but perhaps our quotidian concepts of touch, physicality, gravity and causality might need to be re-questioned. The works in this show all involve on different levels a confrontation with the paradox of what it is to touch without touching as well as our tendency towards Cartesian dualism. These works, however, demand a holistic consumption; physical and mental, mind and body.

 

Selected works that will be shown include:

 

At the opening of the exhibition at Chiles Matar on 3rd March Juliana Cerqueira Leite will be producing Pull Up (Object made by pulling wet plaster vertically with body as only support) in-situ starting at 2pm. The sculpture will be completed over the course of eight hours. Once finished on one side there remains impressions and traces of the artist’s figure – sitting, squatting, kneeling and standing. On the other side are the drips and clumps formed by the plaster as it escapes the artist’s hands.

 

Eloise Fornieles' presents The Body is an Ocean in which visitors are invited to walk through a dark space littered with buckets of seawater, illuminated by constellations of bulbs above. The lights mock the web of stars we see burning millions of years ago in the night sky; low-frequency sounds of heartbeats at the rate of birth, sex and death produce tremors across the surfaces of the water, echoing the waves and the wind.

 

Amelia Newton Whitelaw’s If I Die on This Planet I Want to be Buried Upright consists of a parachute hanging inverted from the ceiling with 200 lbs of flesh-like raw salt dough that begins in a cargo net at the top but which gradually morphs through the mesh and stretches down toward the ground, eventually falling through an open hole at the center of the parachute, missing its chance for uplift and succumbing to gravity.

 

Olympia Scarry’s Saliva, a body of 500 lbs of fat, saliva, palm oil, water and lye is in a slow and constantly fluctuating shrinkage. As in a body's natural regression, wrinkles mark the signs of endurance, warped like a human's physical imperfections, fragile and ephemeral. An arched body, uncomfortable in its environment, its situation is accentuated by its weight. The fats at the core combust and store a collective of organisms once alive. Saliva and soap, a process of purification and protection; an attempt toward unattainable preservation.

 

 

Eloise Fornieles is an Anglo-Argentine artist represented by Paradise Row gallery, London. After a BA in Fine Art at Kingston University, Fornieles graduated from Slade School of Fine Art in 2006 with an MFA in Fine Art Media. Her work engages with human interaction, intimacy and the relationship between beauty and violence, using photography and video as an extension of her work in performance and installation. Fornieles has exhibited in group shows including at the Barbican and ICA, London, La Casa Encendida, Madrid and Babaikov Art Projects, Moscow. Solo shows include Paradise Row, London; Haunch of Venison, Berlin and Nuke Gallery, Paris.

 

Juliana Cerqueira Leite is a Brazilian artist currently based in Brooklyn. She completed her MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2006 and an MA in Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts in 2007. Often products of physically demanding activity, her sculptures engage the history of figurative art, challenging notions of the body as static, and reformulating figurative representation. Her sculptures relate to the artist's body through proportions and form, and are often products of repetitive activities such as digging or crawling, combined with simple intentions. Cerqueira Leite's work has featured in solo exhibitions at the Trolley Gallery, London and group shows including Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery, Subject|Matter at the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, England, Dis-locate Festival at Ginza Art Lab, Tokyo, and Ethereal at Motdar in Copenhagen.

 

Olympia Scarry is a Swiss artist who lives and works in New York. Scarry completed a BA in Psychology and her fascination with this subject is a driving force in her work. Scarry's choice of materials reflects the ambiguities of power as they are transferred through thought and substance. An image of violence encased in glass reflects the precarious balance between fragility and strength, protection and aggression. Decay and gravity also play a role in rendering solid forms such as the 1,600 lbs block of 'saliva' or the formlessness of a room filled with 1,100 lbs of feathers into states of ambiguity and flux caught between weight and weightlessness, the urge to purify and the material memory of human uncleanliness. Scarry has exhibited in group shows including at the Barbican in London, Venice Biennale 2009, Miami Art Basel 2010, and a solo show at Conduits in Milan.

 

Amelia Newton Whitelaw is a British artist whose chief materials are pulleys, rope, cargo nets and raw salt dough with which she creates both sculpture and performance. Her work is often motivated by thoughts about gravity yet also acts as an ecology of memory. In her moving sculptures, dough appears like bodily flesh, gradually submitting to the earth’s downward pull. The use of man-made nets and machinery is a counterpoint to the passive and organic-looking dough. The meeting point between these materials is a conceptual battleground; between human and nature, memories, space and time. Whitelaw graduated from Chelsea College of Art, London in 2008. She has exhibited in group shows at the Barbican Art Gallery, 20 Hoxton Square Projects, the Wallis Gallery and Paradise Row, London and solo show as part of The Physical Centre Residency at Guest Projects, London. Whitelaw lives and works in Paris and London.

 

Chiles Matar’s permanent project space - 208 Bowery - presents an innovative program drawn from a broad range of emerging and experimental artistic practices, directed by Jack Chiles and Hala Matar.

 

For further information or images please contact ross@thewallisgallery.eu or rassa@rassamontasser.com