06 February - 15 March 2009
Late Opening: Thursday 5 March until 21:00

Click on image for slide show.

Site-specific exhibition by Swedish artist Maria von Köhler. The culmination of a grant from the Henry Moore Foundation and a studio subsidised by IMT, Maria von Köhler - Maybe a Herm was a commissioned installation developing von Köhler’s fascination with the grotesque in both sculpture and painting, and sinister relations between expectation and reward.

The exhibition took the form of a large, mysterious, horned organic form; a cloistered mass. A comment on obesity, or on how we see the natural world as food or trophy, or perhaps on the attraction and revulsion for otherness. In contrast, on the outside wall of the gallery, two winged torsos, recalling gargoyles, cherubs or dancers, proudly posed against the backdrop of Cambridge Heath Road.

Von Köhler characteristically makes artworks that attempt to elude linear interpretation by using of a broad mixture of cultural references. The installation played with the history of sculpture, the ‘herm’ of the title perhaps being a statue of Hermes, originally used to mark boundaries, and transformed these references into an environment reminiscent of a freak-show with the ‘herm’ becoming a grotesque distortion of Anne Fausto-Sterling’s ‘true hermaphrodite’ displayed for the public like a carnival exhibit. In the exhibition von Köhler masterfully combined references to the history of sculpture, the natural history exhibit and the carnival exhibit, to create a powerful and multi-faceted experience of the meaning of art.

Von Köhler graduated from the Royal Academy in 2003 and lives and works in London and Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include National Geographic, Faggionato Fine Art, Larry’s Cocktails, Gagosian, Right-on Write-off, Chapman Fine Arts, London, Timeline, Seeline Gallery, Los Angeles, MOCA Fresh Auction, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and When we Build, Let Us Think That We Build Forever, The Zabludowicz Collection at BALTIC. She has recently also had the solo exhibitions The Mother of all Babies, SEVENTEEN, London, and at See Line Gallery. Interview with ArtSlant’s Georgia Fee here.

Maria von Köhler – Maybe a Herm was supported by the Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.

Posted under archive-listing, project-listing