Legs

About

The work of three artists – Henny Acloque, Vanessa da Silva, and Gray Wielebinski – are brought together as points of companionship and comparison in the exhibition LEGS. The works presented have legs or limbs as their central feature, only to branch out into a multitude of meanings: legs as culturally important objects // legs as fetishized/ sexualized objects // the development of humans to become bipedal // legs as a metaphor for movement. Henny Acloque’s paintings and sculptures depict legs flailing about, weightless and groundless as a kite soaring off into the sky. In contrast, Vanessa da Silva’s sculptures and performances depend on that which the legs in Acloque’s paintings lack: gravity. Beyond gravity, there is a force that holds together da Silva’s bodily sculptures to the performers – a relationship that builds as they interact with and react to each other. Gray Wielebinski’s materials – jeans, sports memorabilia – have an indirect reference to limbs (without limbs, would there be any need for jeans? Or sports?), but also directly question cultural associations around ideas of gender and identity. Legs, in spite of their omnipresence and near-banality in daily life, seem to contain an endlessly complexifying essence, an essence which is laid bare in this exhibition.