Installation view
In front of you, looking up with huge blue eyes, droops an obese cherub. Her folds of flesh sag and droop around the strapping that suspends her from the ceiling. Her wings are far too small to have ever gotten her flabby torso of the ground. The figure in this piece, Way Down South, 2007, is naked, adorned with tight, curly (afro?) hair and conspicuous genitals. The swollen, corpulent figure appears deranged, possibly mentally impaired?
Across the gallery, a second form is suspended from a baby harness facing the wall. This torso has no head, just a sagging midriff and swollen legs.
In her first exhibition for this space, Maria von Kohler presents a series of new objects, originally produced in clay and then cast in fibre-glass and coloured. These particular works are linked by a range of sources, spanning toys, trophies, memorabilia, monuments, propagandist artifacts and in particular the long history of mythical childlike figures in sculpture, which culminated in eroticized 18th century putti, amorini and cherubs. The artists practise, characterized by skillfully crafted, figurative sculptures, typically employs a broad amalgamation of references, to produce a rich yet elusive art object that can evade a linear reading.
Maria von Kohler is a graduate of the Royal Academy Schools and divides her time between London and Los Angeles.