Oren Pinhassi

Untitled (Figure no. 1)

Pinhassi’s work examines the relationship between the human figure and the built environment. His hybrid sculptures, often somewhat emaciated, hover between the figurative and the architectural. In the case of The Crowd, a series of sculptures which evince architectures of control – where humans act and exert power – we find voting booths, segregation cells, institutional desks, places where bureaucratic exchange become spaces of bodily desire, complete with sexual appendages. Untitled (Figure no 1) resembles a voting booth, or even a confessional, but it is unmistakably a figure with protuberances for knees, legs, head and torso. The sculpture becomes a fantastical creature situated somewhere between the human and the mechanistic. The grey uniformity of the surface is characteristic of modernist architecture, especially Brutalism, but the sensuous nature of the work belies this purist aesthetic. The interrelationship of the architectural and the human points towards a futuristic hybridity but the social nature of the works, however, is counteracted by their strong sense of independence and isolation. Even when seen in groups they remain separate, mute. Created during a period of confinement they represent the sense of abandonment, or redundancy and isolation felt during this time. Pinhassi’s sculptures are haunting, suggesting the current emptiness of human existence. Much of Pinahassi’s work is concerned with human vulnerability and obstructions that prevent human interaction.