Please join us in welcoming Funlola Coker on her solo exhibition, The Texture of Place opening September 9th.

Funlola Coker will be offering an Artist talk in the Gallery at Brooklyn Metal works on November 4th, 3-4pm.

I am interested in what brings people together. Objects, offerings and acts of care towards one another. This shows up in my relationships with family - traditional and chosen. I examine how these gestures and phenomena live within our consciousness.

These sculptures are imbued with meaning through the history of their materials and representation of objects. Their careful arrangement alludes to a place just visited or forgotten, relics of lived experience and shared memories. Inspiration of form comes from sculptural braiding styles in Nigeria that I observed as a child, as well as calabashes and objects in my home.

My material choices are specific. Mounds are constructed from materials typically found in scene building. They allude to the dream-like quality of memories, and the half-remembered facsimile of what was once tangible. Alabaster - light and glowing, it grounds my objects, it is heavy, yet soft to the touch and delicate if scratched. Pewter can appear slippery, soft, and retains its liquid-like qualities when poured without too much restriction. The imperfect pours and fluidity glisten like half-remembered thoughts.

Through this body of work, curious objects are more than they appear to be. I am building a connection to home with tools of navigation. They are maps, memories, and relics from the slippery spaces and the mundane.

- Funlola Coker

Through my artistic practice I have been exploring fracturing movements in both artificial and natural materials. What specifically intrigues me is the tension between intentional acts, such as cutting into the material, and uncontrolled accidents, such as fractures. Through the will to control, the fractures develop and are liberated as the material inevitably cracks in release. The lines, fractures and cuts visible in my work are always the result of repetitive gestures performed on the material and its responsive language. They evoke a sort of geological archive, based on a succession of bodily actions or events. This perspective, that craft interplays with the wilderness found in materials, clashes with classic notions which consider it to be the exercise of masterly control over materials and techniques. Whilst the cut is a premeditated decision, the fracture is partially out of my control since I can never entirely control its shape and intensity within the material. From this non-anthropocentric view, skill is being reinterpreted as a way to relate to materials and landscapes. As I metabolise the crack in my practice, I sporadically feel in tune with it. Whilst creating stages for materials to perform on, establishing a relationship of authorship, I look at myself as an intermediator, as someone who initiates actions that end up having a will of their own.

-Patricia Domingues