Beschreibung:

Rebecca Warren Follow Fascia III bronze on painted bronze plinth overall 199.5 x 32 x 43 cm (78 1/2 x 12 5/8 x 16 7/8 in.) Executed in 2010, this work is number 2 from an edition of 6 plus 2 artist's proofs.
Provenance Maureen Paley, London Private Collection, The Netherlands Exhibited Venice, La Biennale di Venezia, 54th International Art Exhibition: ILLUMInations , June - November 2011 (another example exhibited) Literature Bice Curiger, Rebecca Warren Every Aspect of Bitch Magic , London, 2012, p. 222, pp. 225-226 and p. 266 (another example illustrated) Catalogue Essay From a series exhibited at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, ILLUMInations , Fascia III is monolithic in presence, unyielding in both its celebration of femininity and confrontation of sexualised female stereotypes. Throughout her sculptural oeuvre Warren draws on common gender tropes which have permeated pop culture and art history, presenting her feminine figures as timeless totemic beings that stand tall and strong amidst ever-shifting cultural and societal change. Multi-layered in meaning, the present work is exemplary of the artist’s exploration of material and form, encompassing and exploring fetishism and sexuality from a contemporary female perspective. Warren, a contemporary of London’s Young British Artists, has forged her own artistic inquiry into gender roles, generating a uniquely progressive sculptural aesthetic. From virginal earth mothers to sexualised provocative vamps, the female form has been explored and revisited as subject matter throughout art history. Rather than negating the creative output from her male predecessors, Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti and Joan Miró Warren seeks to continue the sculptural dialogue; traces of Modernist curved, exaggerated forms and delicate necks are clearly visible. Placed on plinths and elevated, her bronzes are presented like deities, referencing a sculptural tradition spanning from antiquity to modernity. However, citing the illustrative works of Robert Crumb and the fashion photographer Helmut Newton as sources of inspiration, Warren’s sculpture attacks these depictions with a biting wit. Almost cartoon-like in conception, the figure’s protuberant breasts, bulbous legs, pointed nipples and curved buttocks are balanced in a parody of symmetry. A caricature of femininity and a celebration of the female form, Warren’s sculptures provide a satirical stance while also drawing upon the organic and natural, as seen in the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore It is through her multi-faceted practice that Warren succeeds in translating the nuances of her associations into a progressive and forceful new reading of the female nude in art. Referencing the anatomical under-layer of our skin mainly composed of collagen, Fascia III also refers to architectural framework and support; Warren seeks to ally and contrast the very fibres and flesh that make up our body, in comparison to the parameters that define us. Pitted with bumps and grooves, Fascia III bears the finger-marks and thumb imprints of the sculptor’s hand, portraying the external force needed to construct this vision of femininity. The curvilinear and ovoid shapes of the figure’s body promote movement through the monumental form, forcing our eye to voyeuristically scan the ridges, dips and projections of the voluptuous shape, whilst the swan-like neck and neat head sit serenely erudite above the swollen form. ‘To say that Rebecca Warren’s sculptures are always extremely tactile seems like an understatement. They offer themselves as hybrids between unwrought form, symbolic informe , and transmitter, an object triggering an entire chain of associations with lofty and lowly forerunners of reproductions, whether drawn from antiquity or from the artistic and non-artistic canons’ (Bice Curiger, Rebecca Warren Every Aspect of Bitch Magic , London, 2012, p. 13). Read More