Italian sculptor Gehard Demetz uses small “building blocks” to construct his figurative works. In a new series of sculptures, “Introjection,” the artist pairs figures with personal belongings and religious objects “to highlight the psychological undercurrent between an individual and their belongings, and how the external can become internalized as part of the self.” The series is part of a new show at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City, kicking off April 27 and lasting through June 3. Demetz was last featured on HiFructose.com here, and he was involved in “Turn the Page: The First Ten Years of Hi-Fructose,” which is currently at the Akron Art Museum.
On his new show: “The exhibition’s title is taken from the psychoanalytic term for when a person unconsciously takes on behaviors or attributes of other people or of the surrounding world,” the gallery says. “Demetz’s precisely handcrafted figures of children stand confidently on plinths—elevated above their natural stature, they confront adults at eye level with an introspective gaze. Rather than being carved from a single large block of wood, the sculptures are assembled from small modular units–mimicking building blocks–with gaps in their structures suggesting both physical loss and a kind of spiritual lack within the soul.”
The titular work of the show features a boy with a “gherlanda spiza,” which is a grown worn by young girls as part of the traditional Ladin folk costume in the artist’s native region of the Dolomites.
