303 Gallery is pleased to announce Arms Folded and Unfolded, our fourth exhibition of new work by Eva Rothschild. The title describes the act of settling and rearranging one’s body to find equilibrium or ease. In Rothschild’s work, the phrase serves as an intimate and uncomplicated reminder that once changed, things never return to how they were. A series of gessoed pieces directly enact this folding and unfolding.
The exhibition is envisaged as a sculpture garden visited early one morning. Formal, almost classical, fluted elements wind and contort on a loosely human scale in a series of works; each sculpture offering a unique manifestation of the same materiality. Other pieces are carved from polystyrene, cast in bronze or fibre glass, then spray painted, with a distinctly urban feel, they rise above the viewer. Stacked, totemic forms relating to both the human body and architecture, inducing a conflicted sense of both recognition and unfamiliarity.
In Arms Folded and Unfolded, the artist also expands her engagement with episodic form, which is fundamental to her open-ended and dynamic approach to sculpting. These new works depart from the geometric vocabulary of earlier pieces and move towards a looser, more intimate expression of form. Illusionistic, directional color both guides and disorients the eye; they are designed to confuse and commune. They are directly sculptural and are not stand-ins or ciphers. Each sculpture makes us aware of ourselves and our relationship to the objects in the room and seeks to champion direct lived experience and active engagement with the art object in real time.
