Andro Wekua: SOME PHEASANTS IN SINGULARITY

For his first exhibition with Sprüth Magers, Andro Wekua will transform the London gallery by installing a wall constructed of rough breeze blocks, partially obscuring the view into the space through the large bay window. While from the exterior the blocks will be untreated and exposed, the interior side of the wall will have a smooth white surface as if to disguise it from within, allowing the wall to blend seamlessly into the interior space. Within the gallery, Wekua will suspend from the ceiling a life-sized sculpture of an androgynous adolescent.

Known for his uncanny evocations of architecture and memory through exhibitions that imply a non-linear narrative, Wekua here creates a psychologically charged interior. A figure, at once robotic and lifelike, is isolated in a clean gallery space, behind a forbidding block wall that restricts the view to the outside world. The device from which the figure hangs suggests a playground swing, yet he or she hangs in a physically impossible position. Wekua poses questions about interior and exterior, private and public space, performance and imprisonment, revelling in an ambiguity that serves to provoke the viewer’s imagination.

The exhibition will also feature a group of paintings that combine portraiture, abstraction and figuration. Whether the characters in the paintings relate to the sculpture is unclear, and Wekua invites us to make our own connections through his work.