RAW / STILL / AGAIN

This exhibition, "raw/still/again," at Whitehouse Gallery, Brussels, features new sculptural works by Anton Cotteleer. Cotteleer's practice explores the fragment and the partial object, often using found photographs as source material. His sculptures are characterized by an inquisitive imagination, delving into the material, textural, spatial, and emotional qualities of images. The resulting works are described as surprising and anxious objects, blending artistic conventions with personal associations to create forms that are familiar yet unfamiliar, complete yet incomplete.

The exhibition comprises 15 new pieces primarily made from ceramic, epoxy resin, and fabric. Cotteleer frequently incorporates old-fashioned handkerchiefs, encasing them in resin and exploring themes of erotic melancholia. The works often feature unsettling sculptural conundrums, with inversions and melded forms, such as heads balanced on headless caryatids or bodies and body parts merging. The palette combines skin tones, pastels, and earthy colors, contributing to a mood of "erotic melancholia" and disrupting viewers' expectations of normality.