Sherbet Green, London
Sonya Derviz, Li Li Ren
Sherbet Green is pleased to present a duo show with Sonya Derviz and Li Li Ren, whose works, combined, underscore a certain attention paid by both artists to fragmentation, disjunction, surface and wholeness. The presentation follows solo exhibitions at the gallery from both artists, and builds on a body of work exhibited by Ren at both Frieze Sculpture (2023) and Dulwich Picture Gallery (2024).
In the centre of the booth sit three works from Ren, set in bronze, volcanic sand and resin. These sculptures, which originated as reflections on the sensation of motherhood, approximate forms associated with the ocean, while also subverting them through unexpected material applications and abstractions. They speak to a desire to flatten and destabilise humanism through an amplification of the similarities, as well as the strangeness, of human and non-human existence. A fourth work, a cast stomach, is situated on the wall.
Around them sit four paintings by Derviz, whose images produce a similar friction. They are made wet-on-wet using thinned oils and embedded charcoal, which provide semi-eviscerated contours to the morphing figures, faces and landscapes that capture her interest. Focusing not on the image as a whole, but on the specific elements contained within it, she draws in and repeatedly readjusts these pictures until they dissipate into new metaphysical shapes, an intuitive artistic language that veers towards expression and emotion over linearity and fixed ideas.
