Nona Inescu
Litho/Swing, 2017

The solo show, Corporealle, at Künstlerhaus Bremen presents works by Nona Inescu that focus on the human interaction with natural and primitive materials – animate and inanimate. In her photographs, videos, sculptural installations and objects, Inescu combines found objects from nature, such as stones or corals, with artificial or processed materials that imitate natural qualities, as for example leather. She dissects objects, removing them from their contexts, to carefully arrange themin sensual, poetic compositions of formal similarities and material juxtapositions in the exhibition space. Stones are enlivened; subject and object merge into each other and are no longer clearly distinguishable. The artist draws analogies between human, animal, vegetal and mineral features and proposes possible interactions between human and non-human bodies through physical contact or touch.

Inescu’s work prompts new ways of looking at our relationship with “nature” and challenges prevailing subject-object relations. Through playing with the similarity of forms and by setting human and non-human things on an equal level, Inescu confuses the sense of what is animate or not.

For the works Litho/Swing I + II (2017) hanging in the room and the sculpture Introvert V (2019) lying on the floor, Inescu used so-called concretions. These found sandstone concretions from the Romanian region around Costesti are said to grow and move. They hang in leather costumes on chains from the ceiling or lie crammed into a small metal cage with a leash on the floor, reminiscent of SM instruments or Pilates equipment.

Corporealle is Nona Inescu’s first institutional solo exhibition.
Curated by Nadja Quante