In the Present Future section of Artissima, curated by Léon Kruijswijk and Joel Valabrega, Soft Opening presents a solo project with Los Angeles based, British artist Nevine Mahmoud.
Working largely in stone, Mahmoud’s creatures contort in twisted positions of vulnerability, writhing in states that linger between pleasure and pain. Exposing familiar symbols of innocence, her creatures appear naked and incomplete, with the artist’s choice of cold, hard material leaving them immortalised in states of enraptured rigor mortis. At Artissima, Mahmoud realises her largest freestanding marble sculpture to-date. This new substantial work — a headless lynx stretched across two raw stone plinths — leans forwards, bowing as if prefiguring a protective action or stalking motion. This intentionally vague pose hovers between aggression and seduction, with the biomechanic animal body representing a figurative surrogate, enabling Mahmoud to expand her visual language of objectification and infantilisation. In these works, Mahmoud beautifies distress as she interrogates the relationship between vulnerability and surrender to consider the sensual ecstasy found in agony.
Alongside this creature, Mahmoud presents three wall-based works, positioning her sculptures across custom shelves, made with wood salvaged from her studio detritus. The material used is Europly, a birch product coated in resin for added durability, withstanding moisture and chemicals. Overlaying natural material with a manmade plastic substance that resembles wood, confuses the distinction between real and organic — and manufactured or fake. These mechanisms of display isolate and contrast with the supple objects they present, amplifying their fleshy materiality. Uncanny, dismembered fawn ears, either still tethered to, or isolated from their counterpart, allude to a mechanised whole. Pointing to absent bodies, while these works resemble trophies hung on the wall to decorate hunting achievements, the objects they display instead commemorate the beauty of fragility.
