Sleep With the Key, installation view at Massimo De Carlo, Milano
5 september — 09 november, 2013

–

–

–

–

–

98, 2013
silicone, 195 x 98 x 21 cm 

98, 2013
silicone, 195 x 98 x 21 cm 

138, 2013
silicone, 208 x 169 x 25 cm

156, 2013
silicone, 208 x 155 x 18 cm 

–

Green, Red, Black and Blue (Persian), 2013
silicone, 73 x 185 x 160 cm 

–

Initials/Charcoal (Persian), 2013
silicone, 75 x 180 x 160 cm 

–

all images:

from the exhibition Sleep With the Key, at Massimo De Carlo, Milano
© KAARI UPSON  – Photo: ALESSANDRO ZAMBIANCHI
Courtesy of Massimo De Carlo, Milano/London

–

KAARI UPSON, whose work I’ve mentioned before, is now featuring the installation Sleep with the Key at the milanese gallery MASSIMO DE CARLO. Sleep with the Key is the first solo exhibition in Italy by the american artist and features a series of brand new works that summarize the last years of her research.

KAARI works in painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and performance. For the last several years (since graduating from CalArts in 2007) she has focused on producing work for the Larry project, an investigation on the identity of the other that pushes and creates boundaries in defining how much, and in what way, you can know a person. More generally, she works with the ‘ordinary things’ that form our surroundings, our identities and assumptions.

Sleep With the Key starts with a monumental group of unique silicon mattresses. The molds for the mattresses are found by the artist in the streets of Los Angeles. King size, Queen size, Single and Crib size mattresses appear through multiple layers of transparent or colored liquid silicone, with a production process that escapes the artist’s absolute control. The objects’ surfaces are enriched by unexpected shadows.  Going from a liquid to a solid state, the silicone catches Kaari Upson’s thoughts and returns fleshy and sensual color fields, thus producing  a perfect synthesis between Reason and Unconscious.

On the second floor KAARI UPSON presents a series of rugs, also made in silicone, and some compositions of aloe plants’ casts; specular and undefined compositions, abstract decorations and colour dripping get, nestled into the fibres of these seductive surfaces that, while crystallizing a moment in time, continue to underline the absence of the human being. Up one of the walls, a window opens onto an ideal landscape, a meditative space in which to project one’s self.

➝ Sleep with the key by KAARI UPSON is currently on view at Massimo de Carlo in Milano, untill 9 November, 2013.

–