Mirage is comprised of three fragile structures that look like they are on the verge of collapse. The individual forms allude to furniture, but also remind us of ruins from a war-torn landscape. With their pale white color and skeletal construction, they are even suggestive of human remains. Mirage is thus a ghostly presence. To step between the three delicate sculptures and into the interior space Lindley creates is to assume a strangely uncomfortable and vulnerable position—one that seems somehow familiar and unfamiliar all at once. And yet, we are drawn into this space, perhaps because the forms are still familiar and capable of stirring our memories.
The visual instability of Mirage is in no small part due to Lindley’s materials. In an astonishing technical feat, she built these monumental forms out of clay. As a result, the shelves and legs on all three cabinets look as though they might shatter apart under their own weight, and the joints similarly appear ready to split.
Sarah Lindley is Assistant Professor of Art at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Trained as a ceramicist, she has spent her career transforming clay into unconventional forms.
