One Direction is Brazilian-American artist Sacha Ingber's first exhibition in Europe and the inaugural exhibition of VITRINE's second space in London, in the heart of Fitzrovia. One Direction brings together new and existing wall and floor-based works. Working with sculpture, ceramic and drawing, Ingber blends image and object, pop and postmodern design, craft traditions, and everyday iconography, to explore the way in which visual languages can take on attitudes of rebellion and humour.
Full of contradiction, Ingber’s work is a labyrinth of meaning. The title of the exhibition One Direction, simultaneously being a despondent and bleak view of life’s trajectory from birth to death, a disbanded pop-band - a sad eventuality in direct contrast to the notion of happy and joyful music - and the direction of the flow of water, the rising of heat or the spinning of a revolving door. The artist’s nihilistic tendency to create conflict is inherent to her work and practice, and an important way to understand its many winding and overlapping narratives and meaning. In the artist’s own words, “everything is a million things”.
Central to the exhibition is the object and symbol of the binder. Used to hold things together and keep everything in order, as well as being shaped in a spiral motif that turns back on itself, Ingber considers the binder as something which transcends itself.
Ingber likens her work to the process of alchemy, a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination, in which the artist collages and casts materials and forms together. While producing the moulds for which to cast resin, the artist meticulously produces and curates a selection of components, which vary from hand-sculpted ceramic elements to existing, utilitarian blue-collar industrial functional objects, to be enveloped in the material when poured. Part planned, part intuition, for Ingber the process is similar to cooking, as there is a recipe, yet aspects remain instinctive such as the placement and look of the work; the bottom of the mould is the front of the work, meaning the artist works blindly and therefore reflectively.
