'One Direction' is Brazilian-American artist Sacha Ingber's first exhibition in Europe and the inaugural exhibition of VITRINE's second space in London, in the heart of Fitzrovia. ‘One Direction’ brings together new and existing wall and floor-based works. Working with sculpture, ceramic and drawing, Ingber blends image and object, pop and postmodern design, craft traditions, and everyday iconography, to explore the way in which visual languages can take on attitudes of rebellion and humour.
Full of contradiction, Ingber’s work is a labyrinth of meaning. The title of the exhibition ‘One Direction’ is simultaneously a despondent and bleak view of life’s trajectory from birth to death; a disbanded pop-band, a sad eventuality in direct contrast to the notion of happy and joyful music; and the direction of the flow of water, the rising of heat, or the spinning of a revolving door. The artist’s nihilistic tendency to create conflict is inherent to her work and practice, and an important way to understand its many winding and overlapping narratives and meaning. In the artist’s own words, “everything is a million things”.
Central to the exhibition is the object and symbol of the binder, something that Ingber considers transcends itself. The artist utilises organisational aids that exist in rigid institutionalised environments - notebooks, 3 ring binders, calendars - that are used to hold things together and keep everything in order, and reinterprets them in compositions that are by contrast, loose, free, and expressive. Finding this analogy within the constraint of rigid spaces and institutions is a way for the artist to reclaim and reassess her relationship to them.
What is actually being kept in order with these organisational aids? ‘Tax Season’ (2021) takes the torturous feeling every American has of doing their taxes, something that reoccurs in the collective psyche during a certain time of the year, and abstracts it, turning it into something expressive and playful. Transforming organisational aids into a new frontier of the inner psyche means these objects become devices of exploration and the rediscovery of possibilities. Further works such as ‘Water Files (One Direction)’ and ‘February Mortal Coil’ (both 2022) similarly take the appearance of these objects. In a literal sense the works borrow the functional language of the objects on which they are based, but with added characteristics which alter their state into something jesting and suggestive of this state of freedom and expression.
Ingber likens her work to the process of alchemy, a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination, in which the artist collages and casts materials and forms together. While producing the moulds to cast her chosen material, the artist meticulously produces and curates a selection of components, which vary from hand-sculpted ceramic elements to existing, utilitarian blue-collar industrial functional objects, to be enveloped in the material when poured. Part planned, part intuition, for Ingber the process is similar to cooking, as there is a recipe, yet aspects remain instinctive such as the placement and look of the work; the bottom of the mould is the front of the work, meaning the artist works blindly and therefore reflectively.
Sacha Ingber (b. 1987, Rio de Janeiro, BR) lives and works in Brooklyn, USA. She holds an BA in Studio Art and Psychology from Vassar College, New York, USA and an MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA (2013).
Ingber has exhibited extensively in the Americas at galleries including: Brennan & Griffin, New York, USA; Casey Kaplan, New York, USA; Marcia Wood, Atlanta, USA; PEANA, Monterrey, MX; The Sunroom, Richmond, USA; Triumph Gallery, Chicago, USA; LVL3, Chicago, USA; Hesse Flatow, New York, USA; Motel, Brooklyn, USA; Coustof Waxman, New York, USA; John Slade Gallery, New Haven, USA; Barbara Walters Gallery, New York, USA; Mom's Gallery, Brooklyn, USA; Timeshare Duplex, New York, USA; Hometown Gallery, Brooklyn, USA; Spring Break Art Show 4 Times Square, New York, USA; FAB Building, Richmond, USA; Kunstraum, Brooklyn, USA.
Current and forthcoming exhibitions include the artist's first show with the gallery and in Europe at VITRINE Fitzrovia (until 3 July 2022) and a solo show at Rachel Uffner, New York, USA (Nov 2022).
