OBEX 3, MIXED MEDIA, 2020

The OBEX series is created with stone but consists of combinations of different materials. Badriah has developed a procedure to create new sculptural elements. The idea of creating a sculpture that completed itself in its own reflection had already occurred to Badriah in 2009, nevertheless it took her 10 years to develop that idea into a sculpture. As is often the case with ideas, many of them never make it off the drawing board due to a lack of urgency. In this instance the urgency for creating the work lies within the meaning as much as within the shape. One could even state that the shape prompted the meaning. The protrusions that can be seen in the middle are the result of breaking a stone with chisel and wedges. After casting the negative space of this rupture, the result of the destructive act of breaking is then mended by placing the piece against a mirror. The contra-shape of the wounds caused by the braking, turns into a spinal column, animating the whole in a subliminal way. 

Where Badriah’s early works were much more about fragility, her recent works are bold statements. With a hammer and wedges she finds the essence of what lies beneath the matter by splitting it open and showing its insides to us. To the artist the rough surface is like the inner world of the stone, harboring invisible turmoil that can only meet the eye by the act of splitting. There is something within that stone wishing to come out and manifest itself. There is a distinct field of tension in which to work: the stone might crack in a very unpredictable manner, catalyzing a new chain of events in dialogue with the material itself. OBEX 3 is about the savage and dark reality of death, that is born together with life and can never be separated from it. A force that we prefer to look away from, but that can not be denied and has its place at the source of existence. Now coming out of the mirror and into our three dimensional reality, by mirroring the physical object itself.

Title: [OBEX 2], Mixed Media and Mirror, Size: 120 cm x 500 cm x 120 cm x 2020