THE FOLDS

2015

Artificial and natural fibre bedsheets, dimensions variable.

 

THE FOLDS is a homage to the blankets, sheets and covers that contain, hide and protect ourselves and our material possessions. The cloth from which they are made, natural or synthetic, takes the form of our bodies, and wields to our weight and our movement; it also subtly confuses our shape, protects us from night fears, maintaining warmth and isolating us from us from the outside. Our sheets don't hold stable shapes and forms, and are intended to adapt to the wearer, a thin veil that hides our nudity, and provides a filter between us and the surrounding environment. The featured installation will instead present them as free-standing sculptural forms, that contain nothing and are nothing but themselves, a sculpture of folds, crevices, and protruding elements that hold themselves in place ( no wireframe or hidden support whatsoever). A collection of spectral forms that hide or wrap nothing, a hint at the absence and ultimate irrelevance of the human form as the necessary shaping agent for the army of blankets and sheets we all possess. A big lump of sheets in an unmade bed instinctively makes us wonder if someone is sleeping under them; we are used to thinking of blankets as formless cloth that follows the curves of our body, a receptacle, a cocoon for the human form. These are empty husks, which hold the uncanny power to suggest that there may be, or has to be, something beneath the sheets, hidden between the folds.

 

1,2, 3) These sculptural installations consist of nothing but bedsheets that are free-standing, propped on their own folds without the aid of fabric stiffener.