Mirror I am: Silver and Exact: Phoebe Cummings, Mübin Orhon

Galerist and Galeri Nev are proud to present ‘Mirror I Am: Silver and Exact’, a duo exhibition by Phoebe Cummings and Mübin Orhon taking place at Galerist from April 21 to June 11, 2022. Taking its title from a poem by Sylvia Plath, the exhibition sheds light on the multidimensional reflections between the two artists. Encountering each other in a monochrome world, Cummings and Orhon often meet through an experience of disappearance.

Phoebe Cummings, whose disciplines span sculpture, craft and performance, explores ceramics as a time-based medium. Each intricately modelled work is durational; the same clay may be reused as part of a new work through an ongoing process of making and forming. Whereas Orhon’s works completely eliminate the concept of time, especially in the gouache paintings featured in the exhibition, covered with a layer of silver that withstands the passage of time as they preserve their shine for over half a century. However, it is the artist’s life that eventually dissolves.

In her Stafford studio covered in living plants, Phoebe Cummings takes her inspiration from nature, along with literature, decorative arts and the history of ceramics. The baroque aesthetic of her sculptures is drawn from an observation of the dialogue between the environment and plants.

His Paris studio consisting of a few modest pieces of furniture gifted by the Sainsbury family, Mübin Orhon was inspired by glimmer and colours that shift swiftly with light. In contrast with Cummings' baroque aesthetic, Orhon's art is modernist and spiritual. The artist was among the pioneers of this language in Paris following the Second World War.

In ‘Mirror I Am: Silver and Exact’, Mübin Orhon's paintings from 1972-73 belonging to the same palette brought together for the first time, are accompanied by Phoebe Cummings's site-specific sculptures.