KASPER PINCIS: PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE

8 September - 20 October 2012

In his recent work Kasper Pincis has explored the possibility of translating some of his favourite themes from paper to three-dimensional pieces, experimenting with balsa wood and gesso to create works reminiscent of folkloristic artefacts.

Pekee-Nuee-Nuee* brings together the traditional art of scrimshaw (used by men at sea to carve and decorate whalebone, ivory, shells and other materials at hand) and the more austere typewriter art that has been distinctive of his practice since the beginning. Rather than being an author, Pincis feels more comfortable in inhabiting, and playing his role in the metanarrative, whittling or typing away to create props for some kind of museum/film-set/lecture.

The act of whittling seems quite accessible, generally a knife is used on a piece of wood to make something sharp – a stake or a tent-peg – not really to a design but until it is just right, thus extracting an ‘archetypal’ form from the wood. Materials play an important role in Pincis’ art and his approach to them can be seen as ambivalent. On the one hand he relies on the artifice of using stain or varnish to make something look heavier or more solid than it is, but the ‘truth’ of certain materials adds significance, like the calcium of the chalk in the gesso for the calcium of the (whale) teeth.

Kasper Pincis studied at Camberwell College of Art, Goldsmiths, and Royal Academy Schools, he has taken part in exhibitions and projects in Turin, Berlin, Kraków, London. He was selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012 and his work was presented along other selected artists at the Prize exhibition at Jerwood Space in London (September - October 2012), Jerwood Gallery in Hastings (December 2012 - January 2013), and MAC (Birmingham).

*Pekee-Nuee-Nuee - Whale [Fegee]