Whitechapel Gallery

ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies

10 Apr - 12 Aug 2018

Paloma Varga Weisz
Bumped Body, 2007 (detail)
lime wood, copper plated
94 × 42 × 40 cm
Paloma Varga Weisz‚ © DACS 2018, photograph: Stefan Hostettler, Düsseldorf
ISELF COLLECTION: BUMPED BODIES
10 April – 12 August 2018

Pregnancy is one of the most extreme states of the human condition, according to art theorist Amelia Jones, as it reveals the ‘tension between self as subject and self as object’. The final display from the ISelf Collection takes its title from Paloma Varga Weisz’s (b. 1966, Germany) ambiguously gendered pregnant figure, Bumped Body (2007), reflecting on shifting concepts of selfhood.

23 artists consider subjectivity in relation to the body, the object and the environment. Many works offer fragmented and visceral perspectives where the human meets the inanimate, such as Mark Manders (b.1968, Netherlands) enigmatic figures sandwiched between a bedstead or wooden slats. Rebecca Warren’s (b.1965, UK) striding high-heeled legs fuse high Modernism with the lowly comic book in an expression of pure eros.

Placing figures in states of metamorphoses, artists rupture our sense of physical cohesion to reveal new possibilities that lie beyond selfhood.

Also featuring: Maria Bartuszovà, Huma Bhabha, Alexandra Bircken, Tian Doan na Champassak, Ruth Claxton, Tony Cragg, Enrico David, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Geoffrey Farmer, Georg Herold, Kati Horna, Sarah Lucas, Seb Patane, Pippilotti Rist, Bojan Šarčević, Wael Shawky, Daniel Silver, John Stezaker, Nicola Tyson, Cathy Wilkes.
 

Tags: Huma Bhabha, Alexandra Bircken, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Ruth Claxton, Tony Cragg, Enrico David, Geoffrey Farmer, Georg Herold, Kati Horna, Sarah Lucas, Mark Manders, Seb Patane, Wael Shawky, Daniel Silver, John Stezaker, Nicola Tyson, Rebecca Warren, Paloma Varga Weisz, Cathy Wilkes