RACHEL KNEEBONE

In the work fragments of the human body multiply, merge and cascade down, unfurling around a complex tableau of organic and geometric forms. Again, to quote Ali Smith; ‘How do we make forms and simultaneously unmake them?’ The eye registers the multitude of twisting dissolving forms as ever-changing configurations. This creates a sense of constant flux that, as Elizabeth Neilson has commented, prompts the viewer’s focus to ‘swap between macro and micro in order to decode the action’, and undoes any notion of a singular narrative.

This sense of shifting modes of perception is amplified in both The Descent (2009) and 399 Days (2012-13), the two largest and most ambitious sculptures the artist has yet made. The works adopt a composite approach whereby sculpted ‘units’ combine to form large architectonic structures. In this transformative process, detail becomes ever more magnified and visceral. In The Descent forms spill and tumble into an abyss creating a sense of unease, even fear. 399 Days uses its own immense size to enact a dissolve of meaning and, simultaneously, its own complex form to express formlessness. As Darian Leader said:

‘The force field of 399 Days is built on this complex and contradictory directionality, and on the tension between form and fracture. Spherical shapes are distorted, cracked and collapsed by bodily sinews, torsos and limbs, as if the offer of a whole, complete form was being continually undermined.’

Rachel Kneebone was born in 1973 in Oxfordshire and lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Touchstones, Rochdale, UK (2018); Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2017); White Cube at Glyndebourne, Lewes, UK (2017); The Foundling Museum, London (2017); and Brooklyn Museum, New York (2012). Group exhibitions include Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (2018); Sculpture in the Close, University of Cambridge, UK (2017); Maison Particulière, Brussels (2016); York Art Gallery, UK (2016); Galleri Anderson Sandstrom, Stockholm (2015); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2015); Freud Museum, London (2014); 1^st Kiev Biennale, Ukraine (2012); Deutsches-Hygienes Museum, Dresden, Germany (2012); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2010); Barbican Centre, London (2010); 17^th Biennale of Sydney (2010); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2008); Yvon Lambert, New York (2007); and Camden Arts Centre, London (2005). In 2005, Kneebone was nominated for the MaxMara Art Prize.

Courtesy White Cube