HOPE & TOGETHERNESS

The organic shapes of this piece create a new interplay between the works and their surroundings. The cohesiveness of the design is such that the seats only emerge on close inspection, appearing to spring out of the conical structures that support them, and which in turn seem to grow out of the ground on which they are planted. Viewed in the round, this piece seems to be in a state of constant flux, oscillating between furniture and sculpture, and embodying the inventive spirit that has been the hallmark of Castle’s career.

This maternal piece harkens back to the Paleolithic origins of sculpture: totemic Venus altars and fertility statues built by ancient matriarchal societies. Emblematic of the artist’s worship of the generative power of womanhood, omnipresent throughout his oeuvres. This work connects to an ongoing study of human organs, highlighting the contrast between primitivism and constructivism, depicting the body and its processes as evidence of “divine architecture”.

From abstract and interactive sculpture to furniture and collage, Franz West’s oeuvre possesses a character that is at once lighthearted and deeply philosophical. Belonging to a generation of artists exposed to the Actionist and Performance Art of the 1960s and 70s, West instinctively rejected the idea of a passive relationship between artwork and viewer. Opposed to the existential intensity requisite to his performative forebears, he produced work that was vigorous and imposing yet unbounded and buoyant.

With Together Lamp, Van Lieshout takes the most basic, the most primitive way of representing the human form as a starting point. This is the essence of man.

Along with the impact of its opaqueness and transparency, Wonmin Park chose resin for its texture giving him “the sensation of painting enveloped by air”. This forms part of his exploration of substantiality versus insubstantiality and his artistic evaluation of uncertainty, ambiguity and vagueness.