June Crespo makes sculptures from industrial materials that reference architectural and bodily forms. Starting with fibreglass, resin, ceramic, bronze, and rebar, Crespo cuts, fragments, enlarges, and recombines existing materials into new intuitive forms. Some sculptures include recognisable elements – a stack of concrete mannequin hips and legs, piles of clothing, magazines, or a metal radiator –, while others devolve entirely into the abstract and amorphous. Each of Crespo’s sculptures suggests a body entrenched within an architectural space. By embedding clothing – both her own and others’ – within industrial materials, the artist points to domestic and intimate spaces. Her works become armatures, evoking the built environment’s simultaneous support and constriction of the human body and mind. Crespo’s installations reflect both future dystopian urban landscapes and our contemporary experience as composite cyborg creatures. Crespo’s new series of sculptures for The Milk of Dreams is an evolution of HELMETS (2020), two pairs of cast aluminium torsos stacked on top of each other, with the spouts through which the liquid metal is poured into the mould still attached, as well as a group of cast-concrete statues that expose the relief cast of shipping barrels.
Melanie Kress
