JAC LEIRNER – HARDWARE SILK
2013-05-20The title ‘Hardware Silk’ derives from Leirner’s obsessive accumulation of ordinary ‘found’ objects and ready-mades that become materials for her art. Specialist nautical ropes, colourful climbing clips, chains, steel cabling, domestic curtain rings or precision instruments such as spirit levels and rulers, are all items that Leirner uses and objectifies in her interventions and reconstructions. Leirner adopts a formal rigour and aesthetic to the way she collects, arranges and assembles, evident in this exhibition, which includes sculptural wall reliefs, a group of watercolours and a single, 19 metre-long installation that divides the lower-ground floor gallery.
In Portuguese, cigarette rolling papers are called ‘papeis de seda’ which translates into English as ‘silk papers’. Leirner has been an avid smoker for most of her life and through this habit, has come into contact with the various types, colours and formats of these papers. She subsequently became fascinated with the minimal and insubstantial nature of this material for the same reasons that she adopted the incidental ephemera of the museum world – its artwork labels and business cards – in previous work. In the lower-ground floor gallery, Leirner has gummed single Rizla papers directly on to the wall in row upon row to form grids, creating a diaphanous monochrome or minimalist painting that flutters and transforms as the viewer walks past. Titled ‘Skin’ (2013), the installation references both the habitual, repetitive activity of rolling papers and the physical, tangible nature of this material: a delicate and translucent syphon used to smoke tobacco and pot.
Opposite – 10 bamboo levels, 2013
Exhibition runs through to July 6th, 2013
White Cube
25 – 26 Mason’s Yard
London
SW1Y 6BU
