From partial to whole, an opening or a slight pathway, Kaari Upson’s new series entitled Hole is exhibited at the Massimo De Carlo Gallery in London. Upson’s practice often dwells within the realm of domesticity and identity. This work maintains a strong relationship to the plus and the minus or the void and what is complete.

The first room of the gallery displays five works made from domestic objects ranging from pillows to trash bags, which have been casted with aluminium and coloured using black, red, pink and brown pigments. These three-dimensional works, hung on the wall, seemingly bas-relief play in the rounded sphere of femininity with one common visual aspect: they illustrate the link with holes to the female organ, splitting and shaping their structure. These gaps, often taking centre stage, sometimes discrete, punctured and diluted within the mound of textile or acting as a pinched overlap of texture, evoke a constant shift in matter that has been suspended in time. They are alive, evolving, breathing and drifting, caught in mid-action. 

                                                                  FIRE IN THE HOLE  
                                                                             ABYSS  
                                                                  SPLIT TEAR VENT

These are the first words we are presented with when looking at Upson’s press release. It is essentially composed of a long, hand-corrected and jumbled list, acting as an inventory of all words and phrases, closely or loosely linked with the idea of a hole. Scanning through these descriptions, going from PIGEON HOLE to (W) HOLE, we understand Upson’s obsession with meaning and the multifaceted exploration of the hole: as a feminine representation, an opening, an untouched interruption that may be left intact or filled with one’s imagination.

On the lower ground floor, the link between her sculptures as a statement to the female organ deepens. The first room is covered in wallpaper where different coloured lips are imprinted in a disorganised fashion. These feminine looking lips, some closed, others unsealed, are layered with seven small aluminium panels depicting seven pairs of lips in black and white watercolours. These lips have been angled vertically in an attempt to suggest a shift from their original and evident reality to the subjective possibility of their existence as multiple vulvas.

The next room maintains this suggestion, with three large watercolours mounted on aluminium panels where the same, black and white lips have been painted, in multiples, each pair positioned vertically. A growing cluster of these imagined organs increases from the first to the third canvas; our vision is progressively dotted with shapes and feminine forms. In confrontation to this, six sculptures made from deformed and undulating planks of wood coated with aluminium and greyish black pigment stand against the wall, as one remains horizontal on the floor. This shift from an essentially feminine depiction on one side to a masculine form on the other is yet another reminder of oppositions, a metamorphosis, in a conceptual as well as in a physical territory.

The last room has one single sculpture, mounted in a corner. This work takes us back to the three-dimensional pieces from the first room, a hole, a black hole, as the piece is entitled. Textile, hanging, an old curtain or a used sheet, shaped as an open mouth, or an open vulva, all in black. The word hole, with its’ close attachment to womanhood, has been dissected, left open, as per say. We approach a feeling of change, a change from stereotype to discrepancy? With the use of domestic materials to create a new meaning in a known terrain, Upson’s show kisses upon femininity but doesn’t tell. The space in between remains a pause, for her, and for us, as we are given the fascinating liberty to project and transform our thoughts, again and again.

All images: Courtesy of Massimo De Carlo London Milan, 2015