Kerlin Gallery is pleased to announce Lookieloo, an exhibition of new work by Hannah Fitz.

Hannah Fitz’s sculptural work is formed out of the familiar, surrounding us with objects that seem of this world, but instead, present expressionist deviations from it.

In Lookieloo, Fitz introduces three different groups of sculptures, distinct but interwoven. Wooden boxes appear in drag, dressed up and overtly ‘acting out’ as pieces of furniture, with extruding closet doors, drawers and handles. Standing lamps join forces to become ornamental railings, each presenting different expressions of a standardised fence pattern. Populating this quasi-domestic landscape, a series of plaster figurines evoke twee garden statues or mantelpiece figurines from a bygone era.

The world built up by Fitz’s sculptures is neither an alternative one nor a fantastic or utopian outside. Instead, it creates aberrations within an overarching pattern, paying attention to tiny gestures that can expand our possibilities in experiencing and articulating the world.

Hannah Fitz works primarily with sculpture, making inexact versions of figures, furniture and familiar objects. Made in series and painted in a faded, near-monochromatic spectrum, their work reflects back a departicularised version of the world in which actions are disjointed, light and shadow have form, and gravity seems less in control. Their sculptures are carefully constructed, but rejects sleekness for a finish that is deliberately crude and scrappy, articulated by curling lines and uncertain wobbles. Human figures become uniform and featureless everymen, like the figurines on top of trophies, while clothing and household objects seem animated, teetering towards one another as if in communication, inhabiting a shared universe that omits us. There is a playfulness to their work, but also a sense of unease: these ambiguous sculptural forms appear suspended in time, acting more like images than objects.

Fitz has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Douglas Hyde Gallery’s Gallery Three and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin; and L21 Gallery in Mallorca. Forthcoming exhibitions include Kunstverein Göttingen, Germany (solo, April 2023) and The Complex, Dublin (group, August 2023). Recent group exhibitions include Elvira, Frankfurt; Spoiler, Berlin (all 2021); Portikus, Frankfurt (2020); Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (both 2019); 12 Star Gallery, London (2017). Fitz is a recipient of the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, NY, USA.