Alyce Ford

June 24 – August 6, 2023

We cordially invite you to the opening on Saturday, June 24, 2023 at 5 p.m.

With the exhibition format "Im Kabinett" (In the Cabinet), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen started a new series last year that brings a work, or a group of works, directly from the open studios at an art academy to Recklinghausen. Open studios at the end of a semester have a long tradition: the academies open their classes for a few days and all students, especially the final-year students, present themselves to the public - usually a long-awaited date in the annual art calendar.
This summer, the works of Alyce Ford (*1994), who just graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Professor Rita McBride and Professor Trisha Donnelly, are on display. Her works attracted widespread attention at the academy's open studios in February.

Accompanying text:

Almost forgotten but not so long ago: the black bar over photographed people’s eyes. Before there came the manifold alterations options of the digital age, the black bar was a widespread form of anonymizing people. In consideration of the unlocking of a mobile phone via facial recognition - despite sunglasses and facemasks - the censoring bar seems like an immature attempt today, like a bygone cultural technique of the 20th century. Although not obvious at first glance, this has a lot to do with Alyce Ford's collages. A black field of wax overlays a white sheet of paper, under which the fragment of a front page of the Financial Times offshoot "How to spend it" can be seen. The main information field remains concealed by the overlaying paper. Ford thus deletes image information, whilst aware of the automatically arising desire to uncover what might be hidden underneath. Like this chromatic images are created from the wax by scratching. The motifs shown are all borrowed from baroque weaponry. In all of this, however, the image carrier is always cardboard. The same material that forms the basis for most of Ford's objects. Here she layers, builds and inserts, creating chromatically framed cardboard compositions. Small recesses allow a glimpse into the interior of the sculptures. By kneeling on the floor, one can discover columns, made of cardboard, like hidden temples in the deeper layers of a multi-storied labyrinth. Other works from this series have a water fountain inside that is only noticeable by its sound, or have mirrors built into the far in corners. The starting point of all of Alyce Ford's three-dimensional objects lies in conceived structures. Thus, they appear to be forms of the subconscious that manifest themselves for the first time in physical space - they do not correspond to any real existing architectural model. In the end we discover ourselves in the deep interior of Ford's structures, as an actual reflection, or in the collages unexpected motifs appear appearing, which, based on a commodity magazine of consumption, probably also raise the question of our hidden desires.