I’m interested in relationships between bodies and objects-as-bodies to illuminate a connection to the human experience by interaction of forms without anatomical features. Exploring the relationship between representation and abstraction through materials is at the core of my practice, particularly as it relates to the body. I use a variety of mold-making techniques paired with industrial materials to generate anthropomorphic and biomorphic forms that imbue objects with a sense of presence and emotion without direct representation. My interest in how a body can be recalled without direct representation is informed by the formalist concerns of surrealist and minimalist sculpture.

Surrealist endeavors, tapping into the unconscious realm of the human mind, fits the uncanny side of my work. Objects that are abstracted offer a double take or harken to an uncanny feeling of material sentience expanding the possibilities of the unconscious. Abstraction serves as a framework for distancing known and accepted bodily forms into unrecognizable figures with unknown trajectories. My work aims to question whether an object feels alive even though it is only a frozen snapshot of cold inanimate material given the chance to manifest as a feeling. Minimalism can serve to structure and support anthropomorphic and biomorphic forms. It refines my work down to an essence of physicality to balance the chaos and unpredictability that rises from surrealist exploits.

My interest in the body is not an accurate representation of the body but is geared toward what can pass as a body without being too specific. Mold making and impression collecting to capture a body-like smoothness, curves, limbs, internal organs, orifices and other specific body features opens up curiosities to how the nonrepresentational object relates to our personal experience of existing in a body as an object.

koahencke.com /// @koakhart