Waiting Room #3 – William Cobbing

Partendo da una sensibilità scultorea, i lavori di William Cobbing comprendono video, fotografia, installazione e performance. I suoi personaggi sono spesso rappresentati come fusi con l’architettura circostante, estensioni di tubature, o sepolti da strati di argilla o cemento, con cui lottano assurdamente per districarsene.

Comunicato stampa

Waiting Room | a video screening cycle | 03.06 – 11.07.2013

#3 WILLIAM COBBING – THE AGONY OF WATER / 27.06 ‐ 11.07.2013

(scroll down for English version)

Partendo da una sensibilità scultorea, i lavori di William Cobbing comprendono video, fotografia, installazione e performance. I suoi personaggi sono spesso rappresentati come fusi con l'architettura circostante, estensioni di tubature, o sepolti da strati di argilla o cemento, con cui lottano assurdamente per districarsene. Cobbing fa calchi di membra umane e li installa in modo da farli sembrare intrappolati nell'architettura, presentando il corpo come traccia, come vestigia di qualcosa che è stato. Questi lavori alludono al concetto di entropia e, sottolineando fino a che punto il materiale terreno è irreversibilmente disperso, provocano un offuscamento dei contorni fra il corpo e il paesaggio lasciando sospesa ogni possibile attribuzione di significato. The Agony Of Water (2011) fa parte di una serie di video in cui i personaggi, coperti di argilla bagnata e glutinosa, massaggiano la materia sulle loro teste o sono interamente incassati in essa. In questi lavori i contorni del corpo sono interrotti, suggerendo un'ambiguità abietta fra il corpo e il relativo ambiente circostante. Facendo riferimento alle idee espresse da Sartre sul “vischioso”, questi esseri d’argilla fondono le idee di fisico e psichico, con la materia ridotta ad una condizione ibrida fra liquido e solido. Allo stesso modo, l’azione di massaggiare l'argilla produce sensazioni contrastanti di sensualità e soffocamento.

EN
Starting from a sculptural sensibility artworks by Cobbing encompass a diverse range of media, including video, installation and performance. People are often depicted as being fused with the surrounding architecture, as extensions of the plumbing, or buried under layers of clay or concrete, from which they absurdly struggle to extricate themselves. Cobbing makes life casts of human limbs, installing them to look like they are trapped in the architecture, presenting the body as a trace, a vestige of what it had once been. These works allude to the concept of entropy and, underlining the extent to which earthly material is irreversibly dispersed, they give rise to a definitive blurring of the boundaries between the body and the landscape and put any possibility of meaning on hold. The Agony Of Water (2011) is part of a series of videos in which people are covered in glutinous wet clay, massaging the material on their heads, or being entirely encased in it. In these works the discrete boundaries of the body are disrupted, suggesting an abject ambiguity between the body and its immediate environment. Referencing Sartre’s ideas of ‘slime’ (le visqueux), these clay beings fuse ideas of the physical and psychic, with the material being caught in a hybrid state between liquid and solid. Similarly, massaging the clay produces opposing sensations of sensuousness and suffocation.

BIO William Cobbing (London -­‐ 1974, where he lives and works) 2004-­‐10 PhD Fine Art by Practice, Middlesex University, London 1998-­‐2000 De Ateliers International Artists’ Institute, Amsterdam 1994-­‐7 BA Fine Art: Sculpture, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London / Recent solo shows 2012 Even a Stopped Clock Gives the Right Time Twice a Day, London Metropolitan University, Londra 2010 Man in The Planet, Viafarini DOCVA, Milan, Reversals, Furini Arte Contemporanea, Rome 2009 Thoughts from the bottom of a well, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-­‐upon-­‐Tweed 2007-­‐8 Gradiva Project, Freud Museum and Camden Arts Centre, London 2006 William Cobbing, Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Aalst, Belgium 2005 Wall to Wall, TENT, Rotterdam 2004 William Cobbing, The Pump Rooms Museum, Leamington Spa 2003 William Cobbing, Percy Miller Gallery, London 2002 Escape Chutes, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam 2001 Eating my Teeth, Galerie Fons Welters-­‐Playstation, Amsterdam / Selected group shows 2012 The Stone of Folly, Down Stairs, Great Brampton House, Hereford, Herefordshire, UK 2011/2012RAAK, SMAK, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgio Scope: New Photographic Practices, The Academy of Arts Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing More Soup and Tart, Barbican Theatre, Londra Wake, Dilston Grove, Londra Post Fossil, Design Museum Holon, Israele Body Gestures, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israele 2010 So That I May Come Back, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Londra Visibility Good Gallery North, University of Northumbria, Newcastle When Central Met St Martins, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins College, Londra Post Fossil, 21_21 Design Sight, The Issey Miyake Foundation,Tokyo TAPS, Matt's Gallery at Dilston Grove, Londra 2009 SuperStories / Triennial for Art, Design and Fashion, Z33, Hasselt, Belgio 2008 L'Angelo Sigillato, Museo delle Icone Russe, Peccioli, Italia Divination Brunswick Gallery, Londra The Enigma of William Tell and Other Tales The Agency, Londra Diary of a Derelict Dairy London Festival of Architecture, Express Dairy Depot, Londra