Kunstverein München presents a major solo exhibition by the emerging Spanish artist Eva Fàbregas (b. 1988, Barcelona), which will be her first in Germany, and her largest exhibition to date. Fàbregas works in sculpture, design, video, installation, performance, and sound, to explore the logics of consumer objects, cultures of wellness, and the engineering of desire.

Exploring the role of objects as social agents, Fàbregas’ works appear as cartoonish exaggerations of contemporary design conventions, and often deploy mass-produced materials such as synthetic cushions, silicone prostheses, cognitive therapy suits, memory foam, satin spandex, non-slip floors, inflatable structures, and sensory balls. Her ongoing interest in physical and psychological affect has led her to produce work that addresses the cultures of wellness and relaxation, psychodrama and market-oriented research, as well as online therapeutic subcultures.

Her exhibition at Kunstverein München is comprised of new works that reinterpret and reconfigure common products that shape—and are shaped by—the body. A new series of “body mold sculptures” that anthropomorphize common devices such as earplugs, orthodontic braces, and noseclips. In each of these oversized and uncanny objects, a material or production process normally attributed to one part of the body produces a device for another part (for instance the use of dental casting to create an earplug, etc.). One of the core elements of the exhibition is a large-scale immersive installation in the Kunstverein’s central exhibition space comprised of a large quantity of inflated sensory balls stuffed into layers of mesh fabric to form three huge bulbous snakes throughout the exhibition space. The spectator is encouraged to engage in a tactile way with the objects in order to —quite literally— inhabit them, while the fabric produces moiré pattern optical effects as viewers move about the room. Embedded in each of the twisting tubes is the sound amplification equipment that animates the materiality of the sculptures, while stimulating the body of the viewer at the very same time. Deploying properties of tactile sound and psychoacoustics, this installation encourages altered states of consciousness and physical awareness by locating the act of listening to the skin and bones, the tactile domain. Thus, the exhibition produces a synesthetic experience where the different senses continuously affect each other and the relations between living and non-living entities are persistently redefined. (AC/E press-release)