From - To
12.08 8.11
Place
Objects With Narratives
EXHIBITIONS
SOLO SHOW PAUL COCKSEDGE - CRITICAL MASS
About
In Critical Mass, Paul Cocksedge returns to some of the most industrial, heavy, and raw materials available: plate steel and marble.
He explores what happens when they are pushed into forms that speak of tension, intimacy, and the human hand.
The Critical Mass table begins with a CorTen plate, fifteen millimetres thick, industrially manufactured, weighing hundreds of kilos.
Cocksedge cuts into it, strip by strip. These slivers are then welded back to the edge of the original sheet to lift it to table height.
The process feels like collage. Instead of cutting paper, Cocksedge works with steel. Instead of glue, he welds. The result is a horizontal plane that feels suspended. The legs are leaning, sliding, falling away.
There is a visual contradiction: the form feels abstract, but it is functional. The Critical Mass series holds an energy, something on the edge of collapse or explosion.
While working on this series, Cocksedge found himself reflecting on the speed and change of two of the most pressing issues of our time: AI and climate change.
Every conversation, most thoughts, led back to this in some way. In contrast to these contemporary issues, being in the factory around a team of makers, welding, cutting, calculating, felt refreshing.
The directness and physicality of being around the metal, the mass, the heat felt real. Immediate. Human. Present.
There is something in that experience, between the digital and the physical, that runs through the entire exhibition.
The second body of work sits at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Cocksedge takes blocks of marble, quarried and cut, and brings them together in ways that feel soft.
There is no welding here, just weight and gravity. The forms nestle, lean, and gently compress one another; the material is hard, ancient, cold, but the shapes are warm, intimate, even affectionate.
Together, these two series sit in dialogue. One is sharp, angular, abstracted. The other is rounded, gentle, compressed. Yet both emerge from the same place, this pressure point, this moment where technology, environment, and people are all converging, and what happens when all of it reaches a point where something must give, or rise.
More information: https://www.instagram.com/objectswithnarratives/?hl=nl
He explores what happens when they are pushed into forms that speak of tension, intimacy, and the human hand.
The Critical Mass table begins with a CorTen plate, fifteen millimetres thick, industrially manufactured, weighing hundreds of kilos.
Cocksedge cuts into it, strip by strip. These slivers are then welded back to the edge of the original sheet to lift it to table height.
The process feels like collage. Instead of cutting paper, Cocksedge works with steel. Instead of glue, he welds. The result is a horizontal plane that feels suspended. The legs are leaning, sliding, falling away.
There is a visual contradiction: the form feels abstract, but it is functional. The Critical Mass series holds an energy, something on the edge of collapse or explosion.
While working on this series, Cocksedge found himself reflecting on the speed and change of two of the most pressing issues of our time: AI and climate change.
Every conversation, most thoughts, led back to this in some way. In contrast to these contemporary issues, being in the factory around a team of makers, welding, cutting, calculating, felt refreshing.
The directness and physicality of being around the metal, the mass, the heat felt real. Immediate. Human. Present.
There is something in that experience, between the digital and the physical, that runs through the entire exhibition.
The second body of work sits at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Cocksedge takes blocks of marble, quarried and cut, and brings them together in ways that feel soft.
There is no welding here, just weight and gravity. The forms nestle, lean, and gently compress one another; the material is hard, ancient, cold, but the shapes are warm, intimate, even affectionate.
Together, these two series sit in dialogue. One is sharp, angular, abstracted. The other is rounded, gentle, compressed. Yet both emerge from the same place, this pressure point, this moment where technology, environment, and people are all converging, and what happens when all of it reaches a point where something must give, or rise.
More information: https://www.instagram.com/objectswithnarratives/?hl=nl