Erica Sogbe

The idea is to fade out the limits, diffuse the boundaries, accept non-form as a state that blurs and conceals; to reach a zero degree of form and color. Her point of departure is a pair of dismantled tweezers, with which she gradually creates superimposed layers. Here, the first deconstructive operation of her oeuvre makes its appearance: a module which is taken apart and by accumulation gradually generates a first layer of meaning. The second deconstructive intention is added to this stratum: a subtle and delicate mesh of fabric that hides the small modules and annuls their clarity. The form turns diffuse and the non-form begins to make its appearance. In some works the mesh partially covers the layer of modules and creates an interesting tension between the sharpness of the object and the non-form, which is the fading away of the limit. The third layer is also composed of fine meshes tightened from the edges and the surface of the painting. Here, another suggestive effect of tensions is produced, for when the meshes are made taut and their edges covered, a triangular, sharper form appears which plays with the former faded one, by opposition.
Another particular trait of this work is the functioning of the tweezers-module as a fragment. Each fragmentary pair of tweezers lives in the work as an individual, but also as a totality, responding, in its capacity as creative material, to a formal demand and a demand of content. Formal because it expresses the rhythm, the interval which bursts in and transcends the search for the finished whole. And of content because it connects, and at the same time permits interruptions and disruptions as mechanisms of artistic action. But this alteration of order does not imply a loss of the structural character of the work. She designs a strategy to re read the classic relationships between sharpness and imprecision, based on the relationships between opposites as a starting point. These pieces work like small universes that invite us to discover new ways of grasping the behavior of the shape, the composition and the structures under a permanent contrast of opposites.