Heavy Metals / Silk Cut

The ex­hib­i­tion Heavy Metals / Silk Cut spans across the two build­ings of the Kun­st­mu­seum and the Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell. It fea­tures new works, in­clud­ing an ar­chi­tec­tur­al in­ter­ven­tion, com­ple­men­ted by an over­view of sculp­tures, draw­ings and in­stall­a­tions from the last dec­ade.

In her ex­plor­a­tions of ma­ter­i­als and pro­cesses, Alice Chan­ner casts and bends metals or folds fab­rics, draws with ci­gar­ette ash and mani­fests the hid­den di­men­sions of the world of mat­ter. She of­fers a per­spect­ive on what lies bey­ond the cat­egor­ies and as­sump­tions that shape our per­cep­tion of ob­jects and our re­la­tion­ship to them. Chan­ner­’s works con­sist of geo­lo­gic­al and nat­ur­al ma­ter­i­als or rep­res­ent­a­tions of nat­ur­al ele­ments, such as shells, fin­gers or stones. The artist trans­forms these in pro­found, syn­thet­ic pro­cesses, often in pro­fes­sion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­it­ies that have noth­ing to do with the pro­duc­tion of art, such as factor­ies for paint coat­ing or the chem­ic­al in­dustry. She had, for ex­ample, the shells of spider crabs and brown crabs va­cu­um-met­al­lised, al­low­ing the au­then­t­ic phys­ic­al­ity of these ob­jects to col­lide with the res­ult of identic­al, rhythmic and mech­an­ic­al work­ing steps. In­dus­tri­al meth­ods of pro­duc­tion, such as the pre­ci­sion en­gin­eer­ing of CNC milling to shape alu­mini­um into the de­sired form or cou­ture tech­niques to fold im­ages of geo­lo­gic­al lay­ers in heavy crêpe de chine, are con­stitutive of form. Chan­ner re­lent­lessly jux­ta­poses the or­gan­ic and the ar­ti­fi­cial, the bio­lo­gic­al and the in­dus­tri­al, weav­ing the traces of pro­duc­tion pro­cesses into the lan­guage of her sculp­tures. She not only con­fronts her artist­ic sig­na­ture with the cold aes­thet­ics of mech­an­ic­al shap­ing, but also points to the fra­gil­ity of the eco­logy with these se­duct­ive yet fra­gile exo­skel­et­ons.

Alice Chan­ner gradu­ated from Gold­smiths Col­lege, Lon­don (2006), with a Bach­el­or’s de­gree in Fine Art and from the Royal Col­lege of Art, Lon­don (2008), with a Mas­ter­’s de­gree in Sculp­ture. Her work has been ex­hib­ited at the Liv­er­pool Bi­en­nale, UK (2021); 55th Venice Bi­en­nale, IT (2013); and Glas­gow In­ter­na­tion­al, UK (2010). She has had solo present­a­tions at the Aspen Art Mu­seum, Col­or­ado, US (2015); Kest­ner Gesell­schaft, Han­over, DE (2014); Hep­worth Wake­field, York­shire, UK (2013); Kun­stver­ein Freiburg, DE (2013); and South Lon­don Gal­lery, UK (2012). She real­ised works in pub­lic space in Joshua Tree, CA, US (2022); the Uni­ver­sity of the West of Eng­land, UK (2021); and for Artan­gel, UK (2021). She has been rep­res­en­ted in nu­mer­ous group ex­hib­i­tions in­clud­ing Kun­sthalle Ham­burg, DE (2022/23); the Royal Academy of Arts, Lon­don, UK (2022); at Marta Her­ford, DE (2021); York­shire Sculp­ture Park, UK (2021); White­chapel Gal­lery, Lon­don, UK (2017/18); MO.CO. Pan­acée, Mont­pel­li­er, FR (2018); Mu­seum Kur­haus Kleve, DE (2016); Whit­worth Art Gal­lery, Manchester, UK (2016); Aïshti Found­a­tion, Beirut, LB (2015); Pub­lic Art Fund, New York, US (2015); Frider­i­cian­um, Kas­sel, DE (2014); Künst­ler­haus Graz, AT (2014); and Tate Bri­tain, Lon­don, UK (2012).