Jean

Jean, 2017, is one of a group of large brutalised vertical semi-abstract, semi-biomorphic, bronze sculptures that teeter on the border of figuration and abstraction. Characteristics of a female body are present and yet any sense of an actual human figure seemingly melt away. Though not quite a body, elements bring the spectator back in search of recognisable attributes; a head, a braid of hair, a skirt, breast, leg or foot. Simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, and awkward yet elegant. Her casual hand-painted surface treatment serves to amplify the playful and mischievousness of her work. The sculpture is mounted high on a pastel pink coloured plinth.

Rebecca Warren is known for challenging Western sculptural traditions. Her works is knowingly disrespectful and irreverent and purposefully provokes a dialogue with the established cannon of heroic (male) modernist sculptors. They serve to counter the perceived pomposity of the art historical cannon that Warren is knowingly responding to. Immersed in the history of sculpture, she will happily riff or sample motifs from a multitude of sources and pop cultural reference points. [1] Her works often have exaggerated physical characteristics, such as very large breasts or buttocks. Warren challenges what sculptures should be or look like, and provides a wry commentary on the ways that so many male artists have distorted women’s bodies. Jean (2017) is installed in the west-end garden in dialogue with Henry Moore’s, Draped Reclining Figure (1957-8). The work was first shown in All That Heaven Allows: New and Recent Works, the inaugural exhibition at the new Tate St Ives in 2017.

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