Expansion / Extension: Shaikha Al Mazrou

For her debut solo exhibition Shaikha Al Mazrou presents Expansion/Extension.  The title draws from the artist’s own experience conceiving the show – expanding and extending her research into the meaning of sculpture, material and its representational function.  

Soft, squashy, spongy –not qualities normally associated with steel structures, yet in this new series Al Mazrou makes them appear inherent.  Each of the seven wet coated steel pieces created for the exhibition has an element of surprise, playing with positive and negative tension and illusions of colour and material. Expand isa single bright red cuboid that bulges out from the wall. Its crumpled edges evoke a sense of malleability and frailty. Other works are coated in recurring colours and different geometric combinations– two hues of blue, yellow and orange – that play with our sense of perspective, illusion and space.  Whilst rooted in sculpture, the exhiibition is also an experiment in colour and painting. Hence, some of the sculptures are produced as diptychs and triptychs; others hang from the walls like paintings.