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In her
work, Petra Morenzi challenges us to believe what we are seeing. Her sculptural and
drawing work is based entirely around ‘standard’ human figures that are far from
being ‘normal’, to be in their presence is to feel that you came in at a point
of mid-adoption, as if the figures have been given the task of managing and contemplating
the physical forms they find themselves in.
Morenzi purposefully gives her figures
paradoxical forms or situations, for example the installations of white polyester
sculptures. Life-sized human figures are placed in irrational positions, hovering between
feasibility and impossibility. Their stark, anonymous whiteness seems emptied of
expression and will, yet they curiously maintain stances that should require
definite determination, if not gravity defiance, to be able to hold. Polyester as a material takes
its form from its container: and in the way they are installed, these figures are shaped
and given meaning by their strange relationship to their surroundings. They therefore
legitimately belong to the world though at the same time appearing to be at complete odds
with it. Morenzi’s intention is that emotions be projected onto them rather than
emanating from them, emotions evoked by the experience of being physically among the
sculptures. Keeping their secrets in solitude and silence, they seem somewhere between
life and death, their poses bordering on being perverse in their stillness, unflinching
at their own oddity.
At the crux of Morenzi’s work is the overlapping of realities, simultaneous
perceptions of a common source. She is fascinated by the proximity of different worlds
within a larger world. Alongside sculpture installations, Morenzi is interested in the
possibilities of collaborative performances. Her starting point is in recognizing
common
experiences, for example speaking, writing, and allowing different versions to run,
diversifying alongside each other, co-existing in the same space. An example is when she
invited people from different countries to tell stories in their mother tongue, speaking
in mixed groups nearby each other. The voices could be heard overlapping, and to stand and
listen in different spots would cumulate an individual experience of the piece. Here as in
the polyester figures, the physical positions of the viewers/listeners in relation to the
work is highlighted as a way of seeing, and each persons experience of the same
performance is different.
In her current earthy brown aquarelles and bronze sculptures, the main themes of her
work are maintained, but the stark outline of the earlier polyester figures has eased
away. In addition to the expected components of a "standard" human figure, here
Morenzi includes bulbous shapes which have become part of a body or head, like extensions
or balanced burdens. The results are somehow both "figurative" and
"abstract" at the same time. These figures are strange because they are not
awkward, having found an ease within themselves. As seemingly impossible or unlikely
as
they may appear, they undeniably make a visual sense which is difficult to rationalize.
They seem calm, natural, pragmatically carrying themselves, appearing like symbols or
ancient hieroglyphs. These figures are softly cryptic, strangely logical, and convincing
in their simplicity.
Ellyn Southern
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