Sam Spiczka

Spiczka’s tenable use of bone structure, actually pressed into hyper-realist form from layers of sheet steel, finds the natural in conflict with the industrial. ‘Portal’ might arguably reflect rural technology, but the sheer strangeness and slippage between organic, mechanic and iconic gives the piece a more instinctually alien impression, the symmetrical shape (clearly mirroring the pelvis) and wirelike hanging fronds seemingly sourced from science-fiction.

Spiczka’s ‘Relic’ is derived from dual childhood experiences; the discovery, capture of and occasional matchbox-marvelling at a bleached, jewel-like skeleton from a boar in Minnesota, and the wild young imaginings of crusted religious relics — fingers, skulls, bodily appendages — often rumoured to be sat rotting within his attended school church. Interrogating that disconnection between experience and imagination, ‘Relic V’ ghosts the loaded and significant form of the crucifix and the skeletal structure of man, an impression of bone or wood afforded through the delicate pressing, welding, and oxidation of steel sheets. The celebration of harmonic structure, abstract symbolism, an instrument-like form and balance is met with a far messier reality of pain, suffering and death.