Windsurfers is French artist Caroline Mesquita’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, which includes large format metal and fabric sculptures, as well as new site specific installation works. In the feature piece Windsurfers (2014), Mesquita etches abstract silhouettes of life-size human figures into flat copper plates shaped like surfboards. The naked human forms are then cut-away from the flat surface, to be bent, lifted and animated in three dimensional, sculptural space. 

For Mesquita, the raw materials provide the possibility for eternal transformation and even incarnation. She draws inspiration from antique sculpture and imagery of the Etruscans and Ancient Egyptians, as well as illustrations from the Indian Kama Sutra that reveal intimate aspects of human attraction and group behavior. The figures encircle a set of broken fabric sails that co-exist as waves for the surfers to ride on. Mesquita presses the oxidized metal bodies against swathes of fabric. These direct prints function like avatars for the spirits of the sculptural figures. The images overlap and interact, projecting a feeling of physical intimacy and imagined erotic scenes between the forms. 

The animated characters in Mesquita’s works are darkened, patinated and roughly textured through the oxidation process that she utilizes. With this technique, Mesquita manipulates the metal like a form of painting. The object becomes an image, or even a sound, and vice versa. What was once shiny, reflective and glossy, is cut, grinded, welded, melted and oxidized to reveal the many elements within – shifting in texture and in tone, becoming matte, green, brown and pink. These transformations provide a format for storytelling about the human experience and the directness of action and exchange in relationships.