Siobhán Hapaska: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Siobhán Hapaska. The gallery’s second solo show with the London based artist features a range of new work including video, photography and installation. Mixing images, forms and narrative styles, Hapaska’s thematic investigations and visual provocations present a coherent exploration of nature and artifice. The hyperreal and the abstract seem to coexist, intensifying each other's relevance, as the cool resolution of these tensions transports the viewer towards more immaterial meditations.
As in earlier work exhibited at venues including the 49th Venice Biennial and Documenta X, Hapaska presents environments that exploit the tensions and contradictions between the organic and the synthetic. In the main installation, Holding, Hapaska constructs a forest of modified, denuded pine trees ranging in size from 4 to 12 feet in height and set upon simple wooden bases. Their fallen needles serve to fill clear glass ornaments, which dangle, as if resisting gravity, from the very branches from which they fell. The spiny nylon needles from an artificial Christmas tree have been clipped, presenting its steely skeletal structure. The clippings have been arranged in a circular configuration at the base of the tree.