Dressed to kill
Ana Korver is Zimmerman’s artist for December and January, a new artist to the gallery, and Stairways and Enclaves is her first exhibition in Palmerston North. It is a display of frocks, blown on a breeze, moving in soft currents as if from the movement of walking, mannikin ghosts posing to show off these garments in the gallery’s window space.
They are a beautiful grouping. Most are made from marble or granite, finely finished and sanded smooth with curves and swirls abstracted to clean lines.
Some are model-sized, while others have stands to position them up for viewing, often in Corten steel, a contrast to the fine quality of the marble, cut and assembled into a platform or made into complex forms.
They are very feminine pieces, celebrations of the lightness of fabric carried by wind, even if fabricated from heavy and solid materials.
Korver produces them herself, an expert in work rugged and heavy, manipulating the dense material, and welding and chasing with the steel to render them. She uses a wide variety of stone, from far afield like China, Brazil and Italy, but equally employing homegrown rock sources.
Gowns with their exuberant Gone with the Wind epic quality are an interesting motif to work around. As an element they become abstract shapes, but still present a narrative – emblems of women, their coverings and wrappings, ironically with a sense of boundless freedom.
The staircases Korver adds are an obvious and natural development. Not just that dresses such as these could be imagined as floating down grand staircases, but because the swirling soft shapes are emphasised by placement next to rigid straight lines.
The staircases feature below the figures or as part of their stands or else they are inserted into the dress forms themselves, implying the garments are even more monumental.
Korver has, in the main, developed a singular vision. Following a narrow path has helped with achieving a dexterity and elegance to her forms. She has been a seamstress for some time now, using the motif and turning it over again and again, in an array of materials, not just with her library of stone, but in wood and painted steel.
As witness to how small acorns can grow into oaks, some of her earlier samples are also at the gallery to witness as starting points. These are a series of small edition bronze works, mounted, from 2011. They are almost naive and look as if part of some early feminist-inspired themed pieces – cliche works with little to encourage.
They have nothing of the elegance of form of these mature pieces, but are useful reference to see how much of a jump can be made and how an eye can be tuned, and technique honed to produce later marvels.
One of my favoured works in the exhibition is the single work in alabaster. It is made in three pieces: a white base, the circular stairs put on top, then topped with the blowing dress, each section neatly pieced together using carefully set rods.