Oren Pinhassi’s installations examine the relationship between the human figure, nature, and the built environment by conjuring evocative and erotic sites that intersect public and private exchange. His sculptures are frequently a combination of the superfluous and the ergonomic, erring towards the utopian. They mimic familiar objects, seeking to render visible the ways that humankind builds the world in its own image.  

Pinhassi's primary materials are plaster and sand, used for their porosity to propose fluid environments where rigid categories collapse. In this way, much of Pinhassi's work is concerned with human vulnerability and the materialisation of queer spaces, considering obstructions that prevent social interaction as well as environments that facilitate transformation and transgression.

Pinhassi is drawn to organic materials for their shape-shifting potential and works primarily with sand and plaster. Akin to the work of Arte Povera artists, this use of non-traditional materials is an integral part of Pinhassi’s practice. Part of his sculpting process consists of the repetitive layering of burlap, plaster, and sand over welded steel skeletons, revealing the touch of the artist’s hand across every piece. The results are totemic-like figures that collapse preconceived notions of private and public space and our agency within them, heralding a futuristic hybridity.

Just as architectural systems draw influence from the natural world upon which they are constructed, Pinhassi’s installation address questions of humanity’s ambiguous, extractive relationship with landscape and nature. Built primarily from burlap and sand, permeable materials that maintain an aesthetic of historicity, the figures are balanced between stability and a fall, with their feet in a curled grip over the edges of boulders serving as bases. Despite their monumentality, their materiality suggests an inevitable return of these edifices to the earth.

After Pleasure explores the aftermath of desire-fulfilment, when all longings have been satiated. Like fossils that accumulate physical layers through time, Pinhassi’s sculptures, built up from numerous coatings of sand, encrypt seemingly idiosyncratic ideas, urging us to envision the alternative realms we could inhabit.