Rachel Kneebone - 399 Days
Darian Leader
White Cube, ISBN 9781906072902,
Hb, 72 pgs, 19 x 26cm
36 ills
Acqn. 24527
Awaiting stock
£31.00
Hb, 72 pgs, 19 x 26cm
36 ills
Acqn. 24527
Awaiting stock
£31.00
Rachel Kneebone's finely sculpted porcelain works erupt with a bacchanal of contorted bodies,
limbs and slumped phallic tendrils that emerge from amorphous properties of the material.
Sharing the characteristics of Hellenistic sculpture, Kneebone retains the purity of the glazed
white surface while the tonal chiaroscuro enhances the intricately modeled ruptures and crevices
that inject this conventional material with a sensual physicality and unique energy.
Inspired by Ovid's great poem 'Metamorphosis' where humans migrate into a myriad of forms,
Kneebone depicts an erotic state of flux, suspended mid-transition, divulging part figurative and
fragmentary motifs. Kneebone's eclectic vision relishes in the angst of both Greek tragedies and
Bernini, the hybrid creatures of Bosch, and the 'erotic gaze' of Batialle and Bellmer. A more direct
comparison is with the eighteenth century Meissen porcelain tableaux, some of which were
copied from idyllic pastoral paintings and odalisques by Watteau and Boucher. Yet Kneebone
manages to decant all these influences into her own highly distinct rhetoric, celebrating forms of
transgression, beauty and seduction.