Isabel Yellin: Tabula Rasa

The American artist’s solo show displays fourteen shapeless bodies made of synthetic leather, padded and sewn together, and finished with white voluminous seams. These sculptures are characterised by a strong tactile matrix achieved due to the style of moulding and the natural tensions of the fabric.

They are deliberately distorted and ambiguous forms, with the appearance of mannequins, leaning instead helplessly on the wall. These bodies, titled “BB” (Body Bot), assume the appearance of human occupants of a “liquid society”, wounded in the arts and certainties, not alive but rather waiting for affects of a dynamic world, frenetically based around consumption and globalisation.

Thereby, Yellin incorporates expressive connotations and anthropomorphic allusions, which simultaneously result in attraction and rejection by the viewer, urging a feeling of unstable sensorial perception directly tied to personal experiences, both intimate and cultural.