“The Internal Logic”
Sanné Mestrom
19 July → 10 Aug 2013

The Internal Logic is a partial ‘summary’ of great moments in High Modernist painting, reinterpreted through accumulations of found and constructed objects, images and materials.

Each work is a form of ‘three-dimensional collage’ or, more particularly, an overlay of seemingly dissonant elements — art and design, abstraction and function, geometry, representation and psychology — referencing the major signifiers of the period, and formed into concise physical emblems of life in contemporary culture.

The physical form of the works are drawn from meditations on – and recollections of – their original counterparts: an accumulated impression built up over a life-time of looking at art history books and museum walls, wall calendars and coasters. Through popular culture’s process of averaging, these complex and idiosyncratic sculptural ‘moments’ have had their edges shaved off; they have become simplified, softened, homogenised. And yet the status imposed on these Modernist originals looms large, continuing to exert their influence over us, as both artists and lookers.

Think: Caro, Calder, Moore’s reclining figure, Picasso’s Weeping Woman, a Juddian box, a Bourgeois spider, Brancusi’s head, Frank Lloyd Wright’s water wall, a Gormley iron man, a Hesse resin rope, a Buren stripe, a Le Corbusier chapel, a Matisse collage, a Duchampian fountain, a Tatlin construction kit…

Through the process of addition and subtraction, these sculptures of The Internal Logic embody the lingering remainder of their initial grand gesture – a distant echo – softer, and softer, but persistant.

This project has been generously supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program; the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria; and Monash University Art Design & Architecture.

Sanné Mestrom
Born in the Netherlands 1979, moved to New Zealand 1983, currently lives and works in regional Victoria. Mestrom’s work with objects often involves invisible forces, references to art and cultural history, and explorations of the psychological or emotional signi?cance attributed to objects. Her recent sculptural installations have included a mix of found objects, casts and copies, bringing the context and meaning of objects and materials into play. Mestrom holds a PhD in Fine Art (2008) and a Graduate Certi?cate in Public Art (2011), both from RMIT University. She was a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary in 2010-11, and has also held residencies in Mexico City, 2010, and Seoul, South Korea, 2001.
Recent solo exhibitions include: The Reclining Nude, Chalk Horse, Sydney, 2012 and Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2011; Shaker Peg, Chalk Horse, 2010; Things fall down. Sometimes we look up., Chalk Horse, 2009; and Certain Sacri? ces, RMIT School of Art Gallery, Melbourne, 2008. Selected group exhibitions include: 2013: NEW13, ACCA, Melbourne; 2012: Pretty Air & Useful Things, MUMA; Ode to Form, West Space; Figure & Ground, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne; 2011: OCTOPUS 11 The Matter of Air, Gertrude Contemporary, 2011; Social Sculpture, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney, 2011; An ideal for living, Linden Gallery, Melbourne, 2008; and Standing on the shoulders of giants (with Kate Newby), Münster, Germany, 2007.
She is the recipient of a City of Melbourne grant, several Arts Victoria Creation Grants, winner the 2011 John Fries Memorial Prize, a NAVA Janet Holmes Artist Grant, the Siemens Post Graduate Fine Art Scholarship Award and an Australian Post Graduate Award for her PhD research.