Bird's Eye View - New sculpture by Kabir Hussain

2008-04-07

Lobby, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf

On Now Until 30th May 2008

Kabir Hussain, born in Pakistan but brought up in Britain, has made a new body of work rooted in the views he gained from the 30th floor of One Canada Square. Minimalist compositions, these new bronze sculptures are patinated to a chalky white, remarkable in their purity and simplicity. Hussain’s twenty-four small sculptures describe twenty-four different environments as seen from above. Each is composed from a palette of predetermined geometric blocks that are individually re-created by hand in wax before casting in bronze and then assembling the whole. These sculptures are not real locations but evoke visions of pure, utopian places. Beyond that, Hussain seems to allude to twentieth-century modernist architecture such as that of Mies van der Rohe, and the work of constructivist artists Ben Nicholson, and Kenneth and Mary Martin. They were not models for Hussain, but, discovering them as his work progressed, he found that his problem-solving to a great extent matched theirs, and gained encouragement from that.

Tel: 020 7418 2322