Corrupted

// January 27th, 2010 // b-scene // Lawrence

Walk into Willy Wonka’s factory and tickle your desires with an edible paradise. Fruits and flowers conjure temptations. Your eyes boggle and glands salivate uncontrollably. But hang on…there’s a clear box imprisoning these delights!

Welcome to the work of Rebecca Stevenson. A sculptor oozing with talent. You would normally expect such excitable ectoplasm in the edible creations of Ferran Adrià. Well for more than ten years Stevenson has been creating some of the most vivacious sculptures on the market. Marveling at her forbidden fruit is just the beginning of the journey. If you can peel your lust from these glistening joys a deeper narrative unfolds.

The first work on display, Folie en hiver features a bust embracing a lambs head. Your eye initially sees the glossy candy separate to the classical form. The bust in fact vanishes among this wild vibrancy. Fooled by sweet shop trickery you are lured in close. Only then, slapped with some sickly contortion. Realising the confectionery is bleeding from this serene and quiet figure. Spewing like fungus on a dead tree and dangling like flayed skin. These teasers suddenly take on a darker side…

There’s one other piece exhibited thats lurks around the corner in the Nettie Horn gallery. No less delightful and gross, Luxe Vert harmonises supreme beauty with its supremely ugly flaws. This time the Disney disease has consumed the carcass of a swan. Sweet plums and raspberries have swept through its core like burrowing worms leaving a gaping shell. This beauty contest between classical and the craze has stunningly ravaged a new elegance. While the details of her feathers are in tact and her neck and head stands proud, a flourishing fantasy world has formed throughout the body.

In these sculptures, Stevenson let’s natural beauty and a magpie’s fetish have a fling. She achieves a wondrous balance between beauties and horrors. Her work leads me to think how our modern aesthetic is more a series of hybrids than a set of fixed traditional values. That these long established pillars of perfection have been released from their limitations. I urge you to make a trip to Vyner Street and experience this sticky situation for yourself.

Showing until 21st Feb at the Nettie Horn Gallery.
Have a look at her website for more fantastical examples.

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