Jesse Wine
CARVE A HOLE IN THE RAIN FOR YER

A series of curtained divisions pace and isolate the experience of each sculpture. As we gradually progress the sculptures embody a taller, solitary agender frame and become increasingly fragmented. Some are pared down to a single leg and cylindrical torso, conjuring impressions of ancient ruins and artefacts. However, rather than posed in tranquility, the forms peel away from their individual pillars, its leg ready to run. In Item of mortality, though the pronounced foot is facing into the structure, remnants of fingers form a half-hand, pinching the skin of the sculpture ”” presenting a notion of existential questioning. Similarly, On time tears itself in two, its split torso facing in opposite directions as its classically modelled lower half remains steadfast in posture. Furthermore, this upright figure stands on a round base, reminiscent of a clock, its title proposing that the sculpture is physically standing on time.

Wine’s sculptures are tantalising and laden with references: the hole in The smell of sculpture can be interpreted as a direct relation to the show’s title, taken from the Mark E Smith/Fall track that was composed for Michael Clarke and Charles Atlas’s Hail The New Puritan, its sensory choreography imitated by the motions of hands and feet evidenced throughout. The hole simultaneously acknowledges the orifices typical in esteemed British Modernist sculpture by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, whilst playing with its own modernity in its rusted and decayed state. In opposition, For the time been becomes a monument to the past in a much gentler manner, its organic, moss-like surface, reminiscent of an untouched surface preserved by nature, unlike its rusty counterpart.

In the window, the jostling limbs of Presently, reach up and out towards the viewer and the sky. Whether these body parts are autobiographical, fictional or a mirror of our own, of the dance-like flourishes one particular gesture is reminiscent of Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam, suggesting that the viewer’s presence has activated life in the sculpture, or returning to the consideration that perhaps life already exists. The blue-green oxidised copper surface evoke associations of weighty and aged civic monuments and architecture but Wine’s frenzy of elongated, near absurd forms, emphasise its human essence in contrast: once again, returning the focus to the universal body. In all of Jesse Wine’s sculptures, in mimicking the human form it mimics human behaviour; thus activating themselves and, despite its subtle preternatural, acephalous forms, its pronounced limbs succeed in communicating real human emotion: striving to be seen, to be.