Laps

Bradley Ertaskiran is pleased to present Laps, a duo exhibition featuring Gabriele Beveridge and Carlos Reyes. When considering how Beveridge and Reyes’ artworks fit, flow, or move together, there is something unnameable at work, a feeling, a pull, an energetic sensation, a transfer from one form to the next. In Laps, this circulation of energy is abundant and palpable, from the very start of the making process, as in the case of Beveridge’s active glass-blowing method, to the end of an objects’ life, as with Reyes’ use of found materials, exhausted from human interaction. What’s more, the presented artworks manifest traces of imparted movement, electricity, and time, showing how human and mechanical energy actively transforms glass, metal, and fabric into something new, or passively wears them out altogether. Beveridge’s combinations of materials and organic forms recall the rhythm and tension of bodies in motion: from the cyclical breaths needed to create glass-blown artworks, to the repetitive gestures of pulling and tightening used to shape her hair sculptures. In her installation Lattice (2022), hand-blown glass orbs rest precariously on a grid of hooks, their organic forms softening against the jarring metal appendages, evoking a heightened sensitivity; the luscious pink glass beckons us closer, but we hold our breath as if a mere exhalation or movement would alter it indefinitely. Throughout her Orbit series, synthetic hair is stretched across a tapered disk, the result tense and elegant, like motion halted in time. If Beveridge’s sculptures elicit a palpable presence, then her Lightpool photograms are rooted in an absence; the abstract circular flesh-coloured shapes show imprints of glassware, a tactile trace left behind. Harnessing found objects, Reyes’ work carries the mechanical traces of human life and passing time, notably his series Sarah (2022), made of sun-faded jewellery displays from a decommissioned jeweller in New York. An accidental photogram, the red velvet-lined panels carry the bleached impressions of chains, hoop earrings, and other wearables, relics of bygone commerce and labour. In Reyes’ installation Untitled (2022), large rubber treadmill belts cascade from the ceiling; on one side, the manufacturer’s trademark, and on the other, the embossed skid marks from bodies and machines in motion. Reyes’ sculptures are discarded fossils of human energy: materials and objects that have absorbed the long-term effects of sweat, brute force, and expelled electricity, only to be deemed useless and in their lifeless states, thrown away. In Reyes’ sculpture PROMESA (2022), suspended twin lamps fused at their lampshades show lights fluctuating at different brightnesses and speeds, each monitoring the live power usage and electrical discrepancies of Puerto Rico and Montreal, respectively. Here, Reyes’ exhausted, pulsating lights visualize bodily currents in the form of real-time power surges and shortages. Together, Beveridge and Reyes’ varied sculptures manifest controlled and expelled energy, flowing from body to object, object to body.