Heike Kabisch
A figurative sculpture often evokes an immediate emotional response because we recognize ourselves in it. But then, as we engage more deeply, we begin to understand that it’s not as simple as it first appears.
Informed by archival materials, family heirlooms, or objects otherwise facing extinction, Heike Kabisch (1978, Germany) presents fragmentation as a poetic tool for regeneration. Her practice unfolds across figurative sculpture, installation, drawing, and collage. To capture a sense of vulnerability, her sculptures often have wires, cracks or raw material exposed as a way to resist completion and remain open to revision, chance and time. In the smudges, impressions and careful tearing apart of materials, the viewer is given a glimpse into the labor of taming the fleeting elements of our lives. This continues with her drawings, all of which are obscured or antiqued through their titles, which follow a fictional archiving system invented by the artist. Across her mediums, Kabisch is able to explore the unfixed timelines of a beating and pulsing body of work.
