William Cobbing
dal 22/5/2003 al 18/7/2003
Segnalato da
22/5/2003
William Cobbing
Percy Miller Gallery, London
Cobbing makes organic prosthetic-like sculptures, photographs, videos, and intervenes in existing spaces to suggest narratives and displace our sense of normality. As if everything is on pause we are confronted by a series of apparently frozen occurrences and phenomena.
Percy Miller gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in London of work by William Cobbing. Cobbing makes organic prosthetic-like sculptures, photographs, videos, and intervenes in existing spaces to suggest narratives and displace our sense of normality. As if everything is on pause we are confronted by a series of apparently frozen occurrences and phenomena.
Cobbing's Smooth Noodle Map installation (a term used in chaos theory) works directly with the architecture of the gallery. It appears as if the walls have started to melt, white pools are forming, intricately contoured like coastlines they hover a couple of inches off the floor.
A life size sculpture, Chang and Eng, named after the famous Siamese twins, stands in the middle of the gallery. The upper part of the twin's body is a bumpy, fleshy pink, painted plaster prosthetic 'arch' linking their two waists. The lower half of the four legged figure is entirely normal, dressed in two pairs of identical smart grey trousers and polished shoes - they stand as if posing for a photographer.
Reminiscent of the novels of J.G. Ballard, another work involves crashed cars, umbilical cords of shining metal link one wreck to another. We are uncertain of what is being exchanged between them but a new life underneath the twisted surface seems to be operating.
'It is the mix of this alien-like quality and boy-next-door atmosphere which renders an anachronistic time-warp. The fact that we know these things but do not know them in these places or demeanours makes us re-experience them as uncanny. And the strange thing is it all seems to wind up making perfectly weird sense.'
Maxine Kopsa, freelance critic and curator based in Holland and Germany.
Cobbing's work was joint winner of the Oriel Mostyn Open 11 in 2000. Last year he had a solo show Escape Chutes at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, Holland. Cobbing has just completed an artist-in-residence programme at The Wellcome Trust, London, where he made a series of artworks based on research of the biomedical archives. He will be showing the work at Gallery Two Ten at the Wellcome Trust in January 2004. He is currently on a three month residency at Project Studio Buro Friedrich, Berlin, funded by the Dutch Arts Board.
Percy Miller Gallery
- 39 Snowsfields SE1 3SU - London
- tel 020 7207 4578
- fax 020 7207 0593