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Karin Ruggaber

In March 2012 I held my fourth solo exhibition at greengrassi, my gallery in London. The exhibition is an installation of five wall-based and four floor-based relief sculptures made from concrete, pigment, fibreglass and leather. The pieces are part of a series of relief sculptures investigating a growing vocabulary of how form is generated, invented and reworked, its relationship to function and wider cultural resonance. The point just before something can be named and defined is central to my relationship with sculpture. I use casting materials such as concrete and plaster as they contain a fluid and a set state and can be made into any form possible. Mimicking geological processes yet being instant and shaped by the imagination, the pieces possess both a perceived natural, and a highly artificial state. I am exploring ideas around objects in relation to pictorial space, principles of ordering and layering, and the incongruity of material and surface. A Jacquemart clock located on a facade in Brussels became the conceptual ground and starting point of the exhibition. The animated clock contains different modes of representation portraying the hours as statues of different historical citizens, combining symbols, numerals and an ornamental sun as a dial. The circularity and ordering system of the clock became an abstracted template and means of organising the work in the exhibition. The exhibition was reviewed in Artforum online and featured in the Frieze feature: ‘Sculptors discuss Sculpture: a survey discussion of recent sculpture’ in May 2012, as well as appearing in Contemporary Art Daily. The work was presented at Art Basel 2012 and this exhibition led to my solo exhibition at PEER in April 2013.

The invitation card relates to my architectural research, further featured in an interview with P.E.A.R. magazine. The show was mentioned in their blog.