back to the overview I deutschsprachige Version des Textes Contemporary wound culture espouses that the body absorbs the traumas of our ever-shifting social realities. Our interpretations of past events can unwittingly influence our physiology, thoughts and behaviors. Danny Vines’ work during his residency at FRESH air investigates how we process our past; exploring the emotional, physical and psychological hold it can have on us both collectively and individually. Parallax; which describes a perceptual phenomenon that calls into question our certainty of how we see and perceive the world, uses fragmented and distorted human forms to explore the kaleidoscopic string of truths and fictions attached to the memories we harbour. The works vacillate private moments with self and another; uncommitted, they engage the notion of emotional intimacy and the corporal relationship one has with one’s past. Figurate sculptural works comprised of bread and sugar explore the connection between somatic memory and the physical body as an emotional centre. They consider the residual nature of memory and emotion, both across and between bodies, and observe their possible intersection. They do so, by speaking through their distinctive materiality. Works involving freshly baked bread offer entry into themes such as necessity, class, domesticity and impermanence. Experimental sugar casts and an adapted Victorian method of sugar sculpting display sugar’s toxicity, addictive, and yet often comforting nature; and its connection to preservation. Throughout the work, cavities, discolouration and large cracks activate the idea of a physical history that extends beyond the skins surface. Within the body of work, Vines believes ephemeral materials that encourage decay and decomposition, have the potential to unmask and intercalate both memory’s fidelity and unconscious fabrication. In weaving potential truth and fiction, the artist’s work seeks to grapple with the physicality of a past that the mind can invent, preserve, suppress, dissociate from or forget. Rather than look to posit a remedy for possible maladaptive patterns of thought and behaviour, or present a version of positive events, Vines instead brings the emotional shards of memory to the surface, to embrace them as embodied, situated, applied and site-specific ways of knowing self and to show how they warp and reform through constant reiteration. Text: Synopsis of artist statement Danny Vines – series of works from the project “Parallax” (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Crave” – sculpture made from sugar, acrylic, and wax, 155 x 110 x 75 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Crave” – sculpture made from sugar, acrylic, and wax, 155 x 110 x 75 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Crave” – sculpture made from sugar, acrylic, and wax, 155 x 110 x 75 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Crave” – sculpture made from sugar, acrylic, and wax, 155 x 110 x 75 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “The Greeter” – Sugar block and hand from bread dough in a plastic bag, sugar, bread, wood, plastic acrylic, 80 x 90 x 60 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “The Greeter”, sugar, bread, wood, plastic acrylic (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Soften the blow” – lying figure made from sugar, 187 x 103 x 40 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko Close-up of a foot of “Soften the blow” – sugar (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Soften the blow” – lying figure made from sugar, 187 x 103 x 40 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Linger” – sugar structure and hands made from bread dough, bread, sugar, wood, steel, acrylic, 200 x 55 x 45 cm (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko Close-up of “Linger” – bread, sugar, wood, steel, acrylic (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko Studio presentation of “Linger” – bread, sugar, wood, steel, acrylic (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko “Linger”- bread, sugar, wood, steel, acrylic (2020/21) | Photo: Victoria Tomaschko About Danny Vines Danny Vines (1986, Manchester UK.) is an interdisciplinary artist, working primarily in sculpture, video and performance. His practice uses the human figure to investigate ideas regarding both embodiment and psychology and alludes to the remote and at times all-consuming mental and behavioural patterns one can become habitually embroiled in. With an emphasis on material engagement and the use of discarded objects found on city streets, his work negotiates the limits of sculpted human form, converging at the boundary of emotion and behaviour, embodied action and artistic expression. For more information: Instagram Fresh A.I.R. #4 Online-Showcase The Online-Showcase offers an opportunity to get an overview of the highly diverse projects of the fourth class of Fresh A.I.R. artists with their different kinds of media and aesthetics. On view are video and photographic materials about the individual projects, each of which is accompanied by an explanatory text that aims to offer insights into the work’s aesthetic experience. learn more about the Online-Showcase
