Katinka Bock: Palomar

Collected here by Katinka Bock are wooden, ceramic, and bronze elements derived from the offcuts of previous works. The triangular cut-outs, countermould serrations carved out from earlier sculptures are here cast in bronze and reinstalled on oak piers equally cut out of recent objects. Two jagged sculptures arise from this assemblage, one of sharp dentitions (Les canines) and one supporting a mohawk-like form (Les canines (punk)). Other offcuts, this time of leather, similarly cast in bronze, are formed into strips by the artist – evoking the folds of a cuirass, the coiling of a bandage or the rings of a caterpillar (Insomnie series 1 and 2). These scraps are akin to envelopes and coverings, niches and basins, which for Katinka Bock, contain and protect. From perforated holes in her ceramics, she recovers flat plugs to make rings, pearls or cabochons. Other wedge-shaped cut-outs become brackets attached to fabric panels, distantly evoking stilt stirrups. Legs and feet haunt some of the works; never figurative, they are the necessary supports for balance.

The body is present in Katinka Bock’s work in a diffuse and indexical way, further evoked in her Swing series. Framing motorcycle engines at rest, these photographs reveal a sculptural organism, a mechanical heart whose centrality and aggregation of functions fascinate the artist. On the floor close to these images a ceramic fragment invokes a shard of fairing, another shell detached from its body.

The artist’s use of salvaged materials serves not so much as a part of the virtuous logic of recycling, as it does of a sculptural economy emancipated from its ‘accursed share’(1). Offcuts and waste fall to the ground. Usually, their decay excludes them but here Katinka Bock literally and figuratively raises them up. Their salvaging has nothing to do with a modern heroism but rather with patient and meticulous gleaning, where the distinction between high and low, great and trivial, is suspended. However, the aim is not to equalize everything but rather to weigh up the particular, in order to reach the whole. With its breaths and visual fields, the exhibition’s hanging reflects the desire to accommodate our observational capacities as accurately as possible.