Engaging with a distinct material irony, this exhibition synthesizes the pristine, industrial aesthetics of the 1960s Finish Fetish movement with the emotive passion of 17th-century Baroque theatricality. My medium of choice, polymethyl methacrylate, typically evokes a cold, detached industrialism; however, I subvert these expectations by imbuing the material with raw emotion and visceral sensuality. Through precise industrial fabrication, this trans historic dialogue ultimately manipulates spatial boundaries into infinite, undulating forms.

The Baroque period (c. 1600–1750) swept across Europe to redefine architecture, music, and art and my exhibition focuses specifically on how the era appealed directly to the senses through a fusion of emotion and intellect. Where Baroque masters relied on the figurative to communicate meaning and synthesize diverse mediums into a cohesive whole, I translate this sentiment into abstract, dynamic gestures. My work mirrors this historical theatricality to stimulate and challenge the viewer. This dialogue is epitomized by Gianlorenzo Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–51), a heaving marble masterpiece in Rome’s Cornaro Chapel, where Saint Teresa’s body achingly rises, exhaling as she is pierced by an angel’s arrow.

Though separated by centuries, marble and polymethyl methacrylate share a profound artistic paradox: both are hard, unyielding materials that can be coerced into expressing supreme fluidity and flesh-like sensuality. Bernini did the impossible with stone, transforming a cold, dense block into a breathing, levitating opera of ecstasy. In this exhibition, PMMA undergoes a similar transfiguration. Typically cold, high-tech, and clinical, the industrial plastic is heated and warped into dynamic, sweeping gestures that echo the dramatic drapery of the Baroque. While Bernini used a chisel to release the illusion of soft flesh from stone, I use thermal force to bend synthetic sheets into liquid, undulating currents. Both practices rely on light as a physical medium. Where Bernini’s marble absorbs and softly diffuses light to create depth, the pristine edges of PMMA manipulate glare, shadow, and refraction, creating an ethereal glow that bridges the gap between the industrial and the divine.

For this exhibition I have introduced metal frames that act as armatures to support the PMMA veils, offering a rigid material contrast and anchoring the work in space.