Construct: Lynne Cohen, Karen Knorr, Mayumi Terada

About

Construct brings together works of Lynne Cohen, Karen Knorr and Mayumi Terada, three contemporary artists engaged with visual enquiry into domestic space. 'Construct', the noun, relates to a complex idea formed from a number of simpler elements. In this way, each of these three artists presents a view into spaces created for use by their human inhabitants, whose absence allows the viewer to ponder the significance and arrangement of the component parts of these highly constructed interiors.

Cohen's carefully framed presentation of found interiors in public buildings such as offices, spas, police schools, laboratories and military training facilities exposes the many decisions which have been made in the construction of these purposeful places, which often retain a modicum of domesticity and through Cohen's lens are can appear both performative and uncanny.

One of Knorr's recent series explores the famously austere minimalism of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye. Unexpectedly, these spaces are occupied not by the foreseen human subjects but by birds, roaming unfettered and free in playful transgression of the boundaries between nature and culture.

Black and white photographs by Terada evoke moods that hover in the liminal place between dream and wakefulness. Seemingly commonplace chairs, windows, halls and bedrooms lie still and empty yet wear traces of implied narrative and symbolism. These constructs are the result of the artist's creation of miniature interiors which are then staged, lit and photographed.