Forcing It
Sofie Ramos

Saturday March 7th • 6 - 9pm

Wedged between walls, in an often overlooked corner of the gallery, Sofie Ramos has created a tangled pile of altered household objects, each precariously balanced and covered in so many layers of saturated house paint that the objects themselves start to lose resolution–utilitarian functions softening as formal qualities are accentuated. Ramos’ latest exhibition Forcing It continues the artist’s exploration of accumulation, material culture, and their correlations with mental health.

Sofie Ramos, Sad Celebrations, 2020

In an era of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, the sparse Apple aesthetic and resurgent mid- century minimalism, sterile surroundings have been equated with spiritual purity, mental fortitude and moral superiority. Cleanliness is next to godliness as the 17th century puritanical refrain goes. Yet Ramos’ exhibition pushes against our ordering impulses, instead using disorder as not only a generative force but a compositional tool. Positing the pile as perhaps the ultimate postmodern form, Ramos revels in piling up, recombining, and re-imagining a range of found materials as an exploration of not only coping with one’s own messes but thriving, all the while functioning through the ever expanding mess of the surrounding world.