Words strain, crack and sometimes break

Matteo Cantarella is pleased to present Words strain, crack and sometimes break, a groupexhibition featuring works by artists Anna Andersson (b. 1989, SE), Therese Bülow (b. 1996, DK), Carina Emery (b. 1991, CH) and Ingrid Furre (b. 1983, NO). Words strain, crack and sometimes break brings together the work of four artists with distinctlydifferent sculptural practices. Each, within their respective material registers and processes, assertform as a condition marked by continuity and transformation.Dodging fixed linguistic interpretation, Anna Andersson explores how sculpture - as an object ofthought - assumes physical form through process. Her work is driven by a continual negotiationbetween rules and release, where logic operates as a form of pursuit and building up and breakingdown unfold simultaneously. Central to this approach is an ongoing question of when intuitionshould take precedence and when constraints must be maintained.In L (2021), Andersson pours plaster over a form while simultaneously casting a base that allows itto stand upright. This introduces a backward logic in which the sculpture gradually withdraws intoits own mass, ultimately returning to the condition of a block. Alongside such structural reversals,her practice attends to what is subtle and elusive as much as to what is immediately visible.Untitled (bucket), 2025, a concrete work shown on the floor, is formed from a bucket of water usedto wash hands and tools after working with plaster, allowing the material to register thecircumstances of its own making.Attempting to move beyond themeslves while remaining steadily held in place, the works give formto the elusive tension of never fully knowing which pursues which - the mind or the world.For Bülow, material exists across multiple registers at once. It holds traces of memory, sensation,and thought, operating both as an intangible field of resonance and as something physicallypresent. These immaterial associations are not separate from matter but embedded within it, givingmaterial a dynamic, living quality, one that remains responsive and continually reshaped by shiftingconditions.In Splint (2025), two found bicycle rear fenders are held in suspension from a vertically mounted,elongated red form fixed directly to the wall. The work reads simultaneously as rigid andvulnerable. Its outer shell curves inward, partially enclosing an interior void, as if still engaged in anact of shielding or protection, despite the absence of a body to serve. At the same time, its metallicsurface and exposed, sharply defined mounting points assert its constructed and industrialcharacter. These elements interrupt any purely organic reading, grounding the work in systems offabrication, attachment, and support. The tension between these registers - care/constraint,vulnerability/rigidity - becomes central, positioning the object as both a protective shell and astructure dependent on external forces to remain in place.Bülow’s practice attends to such minute entanglements to reimagine how bodies, objects, andforces coexist. In doing so, her work invites ontological reflection on how we perceive and engagewith the world beyond the boundaries of the individual, foregrounding the depth ofinterconnectedness and the shared trajectories between humanity and its ecological surroundings.

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Almost all animals, including humans, emit direct-current fields into sea-water as a result of electricdifferences between their bodies and the ocean. Tiny bladders are found in the skin of all sharksand rays. These sensory vesicles contact the surrounding water through jelly-filled canals that leadto groups of pores on the animal‘s head. They use these structures to detect the natural electricalcharges of potential prey, and may also use them for navigation and communication with eachother.Similar to these jelly-filled sensitive organs, Carina Emery's Stretch Receptors (2023) work assensors that seem to record, trace and contact. Hip prostheses are anchored in the circularopenings of their respective mechanical body, or are guarding them. These dissected enginecomponents are reminiscent of cross-sections of organs or body parts. The metal thereforebecomes membranes, nerfs, vessels or tendons. Similar to stretch receptors in the human body,which monitor the state of muscles and return the information to the central nervous system.Emery’s practice consistently explores the mimetic interplay between the organic-natural andconstructed matter. By isolating and magnifying bodily and mechanical structures, and by drawingattention to shifts between micro and macro scales, she activates the crafted body as a site ofassociation. Forms open as an analogies for psychological, emotional, and social processes,however, at the same time, they remain anchored in the ambiguity of the body: they exist betweenforeign object, tools, and extension of the self.Norwegian artist Ingrid Furre often draws inspiration from domestic surroundings, producing formsand structures made from a variety of materials such as wood, fabric, foam, or soap. It is at theintersection of familiarity and abstraction, that for Furre sculpture emerges.Installed as a pair, the two bronze elements of losing face (2021) appear to turn away from oneanother, suggesting a breakdown in alignment or coordination. Rather than forming a coherentwhole, the work stages a relationship defined by distance, misrecognition, and incompletecorrespondence.Each form is cast from fine strands of hair condensed into a single, solid mass, recalling thestylized treatment of hair in ancient sculptural traditions, particularly in marble and sandstone.Translated into bronze, hair - normally light, intimate, and mutable - becomes dense and weighted,underscoring its cultural and symbolic charge while stripping it of individual specificity.The objects hover between recognizability and opacity. They seem to hint at a former use orfunction - tools such as a knife or a sledgehammer come to mind - yet any clear reference remainsunresolved. This ambiguity situates the work within a suspended temporality. In this way, losingface (2021) articulates form as relational and displaced - defined through the lingering trace ofsomething once aligned.matteo cantarella info@matteocantarella.net www.matteocantarella.net