Verisimilitude

02.12.06 - 19.01.07

In this, her first London solo show, Liane Lang presents a new series of photographs that play on the natural human instinct to read qualities such as intelligence or emotion into objects and images. Her series takes us into a fictitious sculptor's studio: a windowless room subjected to a tasteless and disingenuous interior design scheme, with walls clad in a plastic laminate printed with a faux-wooden pattern, replete with knots and grain, and a floor covered in linoleum masquerading as ceramic tiles. In this space, only partially and dimly lit, a sculptor has been at work. Sections of plaster moulds lie about, sometimes haphazardly scattered, sometimes deliberately ordered, presumably by the figures that inhabit the pictures.

Of mysterious origin and nature, these figures appear in a variety of poses, evocative but uncertain. In Pose and Position, a figure kneels in the foreground of the shot, possibly in supplication, her head and torso covered by plaster, as if ensalved. Behind her to her right, another woman sits casually, drawing or writing, playing, perhaps, the part of a callous artist, observing discomfort dispassionately. In The Sculptor's Habit the naked form of a woman teases the viewer from behind a plaster mould, on her legs and hands in view. The presence of a pair of nail scissors in the figure's right hand seems, in this incongruous set-up, to imbue her with a sadistic air.

Employing the staging conventions of Modernist theatre, with its preference for simple spaces in which to dramatise existential human crises, and a variety of visual cliches associated with popular depictions of artist and sculptors, such as the cast, the model and the dummy, Lang's images take on multiple layers of meaning that resonate with each other, amplifying their depth and potential whilst never surrendering a clear narrative to the viewer.

At no point is it made clear where artifice stops and truth starts; neither is articulated who is maker, nor who is made.