Seccesion, Vienna, Austria
Danzante. June Crespo
Curated by Bettina Spör

June Crespo’s sculptural assemblages, which the artist understands as communicating vessels, resonate within our bodies. At times delicate, at others forceful, they always emanate a vital, living quality.

Most of the works in the exhibition Danzante take their formal vocabulary from the iris and the strelitzia (bird of paradise). Yet the artist is not concerned with representing these plants. Instead of proposing a classificatory symbolic order, they serve as starting points for a deeper engagement with materiality and the evocative potential of surfaces and textures, which take precedence over the pictorial dimension. Crespo treats her materials as agents, understanding herself an assistant to her work rather than an authority figure. In this way, she offers us a visceral experience – an encounter with objects that touch us in our corporeality and heighten our awareness of our own presence and its fragmented condition.