Amsterdam Art Gallery Night | Lucy Skaer | Rural Works

GRIMM is pleased to announce Rural Works, a new solo exhibition of works by Lucy Skaer at our Van Baerlestraat location in Amsterdam.

Lucy Skaer combines form and material, navigating between points in time and mutable physical states. She pulls her subject matter away from its original context while preserving a sense of material memory; this is present in her new body of works, where she translates the forms of animals into ceramic, bronze and carved-stone sculptures.

Sequences of abstract animal pelts manifest simultaneous natural states; they shift from flora, to fauna, mineral to weather event. Among them, six small-scale ceramic pelts are striking for their individual subtleties and the gradations of forms they produce as a collection. The large bronze pelts were conceived as an embodiment of the words, “forest”, “fire”, “glass” and “fog”. Skaer combines and layers her references upon one another so that varying juxtapositions of texture ­are coupled. Along with the pelts, a pair of stone basins supporting abstract animal heads are positioned within the gallery space. The latter respond to the staging of religious rituals, suggesting sacred or occult functions.

Skaer’s symbolic language draws from her long-term exploration of material, memory, and the bonds between humans and animals. Her process is further informed by research she conducted at the Temple of Mithras where she examined artefacts from the renowned Roman-Era archaeological site in the center of London. Through Skaer’s gesture ancient forms are nurtured and reanimated, acquiring new dimensions that connect them to present systems of knowledge.

By paying close attention, Skaer locates and amplifies a sense of the divine in subject matter that is terrestrial. Each work tells its own alchemic story and allows the viewer to comprehend the deeper potential of both images and objects as vessels of meaning.