Lucy Skaer: Ingots and Adaptations
GRIMM is pleased to announce Ingots and Adaptations, a presentation of works by Lucy Skaer at the Amsterdam gallery, on view from 25 July until 7 September 2024.
Lucy Skaer’s multimedia practice is equal parts material and conceptual, drawing from a background of history, art and its foibles. The veritable craftsmanship of individual artworks points to the inheritance of artistic techniques and contrasts handmade objects with processes of reproduction. Altering the content of her source material, Skaer reanimates the significance of images in the collective consciousness. The use, ritual, and history of the materials she uses are both implied and concealed, but there is a recurrent concern for their relationship to the landscape.
Throughout her practice, Skaer interprets imagery and objects found within diverse contexts and histories before transforming or disrupting their material and metaphorical origins. All the works in this presentation can be reduced to one single form, the copper ingot - a recurrent motive throughout Skaer’s oeuvre. Central to the presentation is Skaer’s sculptural installation, Harlequin’s Ingots - a group of polished copper bars seemingly randomly scattered over the floor, playful as the character from which the work takes its name. Sliced in various triangular shapes, the angular surfaces catch the light, creating reflections that make the work interact with its surroundings.
Encircling the gallery space are Hares, adapted from the copper ingots to which ears and eyes are added, laboriously transforming something materially minimal or cold into something lively, animated, and animal. Derived from Skaer’s interest in the illustrations from the Livre de Chasse, a Mediaeval hunting manual written between 1387-1389 by Gaston III, Count of Foix, the Hares appear as frozen moments within a hunt, a balance of the force of desire, the blankness of raw material and the possibility of empathy.
Skaer successfully transforms the static ingots into a dynamic composition and creates a suggestion of movement - as if the solid metal were weightless.
