Amy Stephens: Patterns in the Chaos

[T]here will be a new form; and this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else. The form and the chaos remain separate. [T]he form itself becomes a preoccupation, because it exists as a problem separate from the material it accommodates. To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now. - Samuel Beckett

William Benington Gallery is pleased to announce Patterns in the Chaos, a solo exhibition of new works by London-based artist Amy Stephens. In December 2013, Stephens was awarded the Triangle Network Fellowship to Oman in association with Gasworks Gallery, London offering her a rare insight into Omani culture. The work on display is a direct response from her time spent in Muscat.

Stephens’ practice, while rooted in architecture and design, maintains the simple elegance of the drawn line. She describes the works in this show as “tracings that form the basis of an architectural skeleton.” The artist uses an array of architectural and industrial materials, including copper piping and perspex. These are inherently understated in isolation, but through Stephens’ intervention, the viewer is invited to reconsider the structure and surface of these familiar materials.

Manipulated copper tubing is used to portray the fundamentals of linear drawing on a human scale. Playfully brought together, these pieces create a geometric framework through a series of staggered mini portals. Each of these meditative adornments activates the others, contributing to the exhibition’s sense of balance and scale. There is a raw intimacy to Stephens’ work in the places in which the marks of the maker are revealed. Lines have been drawn, bent and polished to create an in-between space that encourages a natural exchange around and through the shapes.