LISA LAPINSKI
CAPTAIN HOOK AT ETON
15 MARCH – 19 APRIL 2014
“He had one last triumph, which I think we need not grudge him. As he stood on the bulwark looking over his shoulder at Peter gliding through the air, he invited him with a gesture to use his foot. It made Peter kick instead of stab. At last Hook had got the boon for which he craved. “Bad form,” he cried jeeringly, and went content to the crocodile.” – J.M. Barrie
Johann König is pleased to present Lisa Lapinski’s third solo exhibition CAPTAIN HOOK AT ETON. Comprised of a large-scale sculpture, two series of wall-mounted sculptures, and a series of photographs, the exhibition employs a range of materials and images that are both evocative and illusive in nature. One group of wall works were made by encasing portable home projection screens in blocks of plaster. The heavy plaster slabs nearly encase the fragile screens, making them look entombed. In each piece, the dry plaster surface creates a new screen of sorts, albeit one with a matte and ponderous quality rather than light and reflective one. In addition, the surface of each block is filigreed with a plaster pattern made from inlaying cast plaster hearts, clovers, or spades. The familiar symbols, which appear like after-images to the viewer, profoundly lighten the bulky quality of the slabs. Paradoxically blank, yet active, these works mark a continuation of Lapinski’s ongoing interest in everyday graphic symbols recast in unfamiliar material settings.
For a second group of wall works, Lapinski has cast colored wax in the slats of window blinds that have been folded into fan-like shapes. Each piece suggests a radiating sunburst image that stands in contrast to the original sun-blocking function of the blinds, and each is capped with a split shoe (also mounted on the wall), seemingly in mid-flight over the disembodied horizon. In a large, multi-part floor sculpture in the center of the gallery, blocky lucite “nests” surround an abstracted bird and stand in glossy contrast to the evocative, yet matte and mutely opaque, qualities of the wax and plaster works.
Finally, a sound piece recorded with Mitchell Syrop, titled ROBUST CHEER, will cheer on the show three times daily during the run of the exhibition.