The work of Eva Fàbregas seems to teeter between binaries; colossal (and sometimes, smaller) sculptures are often alluring and inviting, but sometimes overwhelming. They are at once familiar, and alien. Smooth, glossy, blemish-free surfaces are punctuated by strange ridges and knobbly bits. By default, Fàbregas’s sculptural forms toy with a visceral kind of response. The work plays with notions of desire - an exploration of human reactions and responses to objects and things, explored through sculptures that themselves are satisfying to look at, to touch, to interact with. Inherently, then, Fàbregas’s work is sensorial - but crucially, the artist conceives her work in a somatic way, a word here used to explain sculpture in reference to its relationship to, and with, the human body. Speaking to Present Space over email, Fàbregas explains how the senses are rendered in sculpture, and how colour, texture and form are used to shape experience, and encounter, with these pieces. In the second half of 2022, Fàbregas took part in the Lyon Biennale, the theme of which was centred around a ‘manifesto of fragility’ by curators, Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. Below, Fàbregas discusses Growths, the work made for the biennale, which was on display in the Fagor Factory - a venue formerly used by the home appliance company of the same name, and now used for cultural events such as the biennale.
Eva Fàbregas
When Sam and Till, the curators, invited me to participate in the biennale’s Manifesto of Fragility, I put a lot of thinking about how these questions of fragility resonate within my own practice and experience, and I wanted to push my work into a different territory, one in which bodily and organic shapes point to an imaginary of decay and fragility, but also contagion and monstrosity. For the biennale, I showed a new series of inflatable objects that are made of elastic fabric and air and take the form of bulbous fruits or monstrous organs, hanging and extending across the ceiling of the Fagor building. These objects are ambiguous and formless, they come from mutation, from combination and multiplication, and, for me, they look like some sort of protuberance or lump, or the leftovers of some sort of animal, like cocoons or carcasses, but also like rotten fruit or hanging flowers, or organs or maybe tumours growing out of control. What interests me in these sculptures is the potential, but also the danger, there is within this idea of uncontrollable organic growth. These sculptures are a way for me to think about growth and organic decay, fragility and resilience all together, challenging such dichotomies. There is of course a sense of danger and threat, but also so much power in the way these objects spread across the space, taking over the Fagor Factory as some sort of infection that is engulfing its architecture. It’s a little frightening but I believe there is so much potential in contagion.
Eva Fàbregas
My work has smooth forms, with very specific colours and textures, with polished or vibrant surfaces, and their surging contours combined with all these elements invite (and sometimes demand) the touch of one’s hand. The texture, the form, the colour, the scale, the interaction with my body, the senses and the movement, all belong to my sculptor’s world. When I work on one of my sculptures, it needs to affect myself through all the senses and through my whole body. What I would like to achieve with my work is inviting people to think with their fingers, to think through touch, to engage with the sensorial and to invite experience.
