‘Soft Rupture’ reopens Part 2 of Surface Tensions 2020: ‘Contra Culture’ with a fully immersive site-specific installation that takes over both inside & outside the building - spaces are exaggerated through forced perspective, interrupting the gallery’s existing architecture through inflated forms, colour and trompe-l’œil.
Juxtaposing static sculpture and the fluid, chewing gum physics of the Golden Age of Cartoon, Soft Rupture is animation in freeze-frame. It creates a forever-in-stasis diorama, where familiar, household forms are skewed in this stage set and everyday architecture is injected with anthropomorphic gestures. These gestures animate the objects with emotion, transporting them into the foreground. As viewers, we enter the space of the furniture sculptures and exist amongst them, becoming background figures in their story.
Exploring issues of mental health and sensuality through the queer perspective, the world Pooler creates speaks of millennial ennui and anxiety through sculptural performance. These sculptures explore feelings of uncertainty, dejection and confusion experienced through the seemingly never-ending process of learning, life lessons, growing up and the transition into adulthood.
