Both Sides Now

HB381 is pleased to announce Both Sides Now, a solo exhibition of new sculptural works by ceramicist Irene Nordli (b. 1967, Norway). Nordli forms clay into convulsive vessels, complex assemblages freighted with wrinkling folds and amorphous ribbons of matter that sag, stretch, and compress under the active force of her hands. Exquisitely produced, her intricate sculptures turn the body of the vessel inside out, inviting viewers to contemplate both sides simultaneously: the interior and exterior, the refined and discordant, recto and verso, the structure and the open network of space within it.

While seemingly abstract, Nordli’s work represents a dance with the figurative, extending sculpture’s tradition into somatic terrain. “I consider them almost like bodies,” she says of her vessels, describing the gestural and twisting movement generated by each piece. Although at a remove from classical statuary, they revive its tenets of pose and stance, mimicking the way a body might stretch, bend, or strain. Nordli, however, is less interested in classical ideals of harmony and balance, preferring to render her vessels ragged, unstable, even abject. Often, they are riddled with holes and slender openings, sometimes almost approaching aspects of a skeletal structure or the cavities of tissue and organs. These apertures into the vessels’ interiors rid the works of any pretense of function; as alluded to in her titles, they serve as vessels for secrets, introspection, protection, sorrow, and enigma. One finds this in Nordli’s Vessels for the Unknown with their fragmented and disquieting forms, which hold space for intangible sensations and philosophical musings.