Maruša Sagadin Doris Ionic Iconic

SPACE Mare Street

Sagadin’s sculptural mash-ups play on associations between urban space and personal desires, consumer urges and experiences of the individual resident

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Maruša Sagadin’s Doris Ionic Iconic includes a public bench-like sculpture in front of SPACE Mare Street and in the gallery, a smaller sculpture for sitting on and a series of wall works. The project refers to architectural and bodily forms in combination  with post-modern colour palettes and graffiti fonts to make visible a choreographed contemporary urban language.

Highly aware of her architectural predecessors, the artist plays off distinctly historical and contemporary forms and their associated classifications. By renaming the Doric column Doris, Sagadin shifts the concept of support structure to a gendered context. Collapsing the space between the Ionic column and Zaha Hadid’s iconic architectural wave form, Sagadin’s resulting sculptural mash-ups move swiftly between a stadium fashioned into a pair of platform shoes or a skyscraper depicted as a tube of lipstick. Brought together with foundational architectural elements, these associations highlight strength and visibility. The project as a whole reflects numerous perspectives from the general commercialisation of urban space to personal desires, consumer urges and experiences of the individual resident.

A commissioned essay on Doris Ionic Iconic written by Tina Di Carlo is available here.

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Maruša Sagadin (b. Ljubljana, Slovenia) is based in Vienna and Doris Ionic Iconic is her first exhibition in the UK. Her practice incorporates references to architecture, feminism, pop and subcultures, as well as urban street culture. The resulting sculptural works articulate a seductive version of the built environment that is double-edged, both colourfully celebratory and critical.

Sagadin’s work has been shown widely in Europe and USA, including the selected upcoming and recent exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2016); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2015); Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin (2014); Neue Galerie, Innsbruck (2014); 21er Haus, Vienna (2012) and MAK Center, Los Angeles (2010).

Maruša Sagadin’s Doris Ionic Iconic is kindly supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum London, Federal Chancellery of Austria and Province of Styria.