Aufsicht (Invigilator)

Executed in 2008, Aufsicht (Invigilator) exemplifies Nairy Baghramian’s sculptural investigations into the relationship between architecture, interior design and the human body. Comprising seemingly weightless sheets of flawless aluminium, the work initially seems to recall the chairs used by gallery invigilators. At the same time, its elusive, organic form subtly defies ergonomic principles, protruding from the wall like an architectural ornament or Surrealist object. ‘Baghramian is operating between the body and design’, claimed a review of her joint show with Phyllida Barlow at the Serpentine Gallery in 2010, where another work from the series was shown. ‘Her forms are not exactly regular. Their tooling is very smooth and probably machine-made, but their contours are slightly organic, twisting, undulating. They echo something we’re already familiar with in our world, things that are deliberately manufactured to ft our bodies, such as furniture and medical equipment. These objects have an abstract curvaceousness, a generalised body-form to them. Baghramian sculptures play a variation on these man-made limbs’ (T. Lubbock, ‘Curatorial coup: Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow share a show at the Serpentine’, The Independent, 12 May 2010). Born in Iran and now based in Berlin, Baghramian has received widespread critical acclaim for her sculptural practice, with recent solo exhibitions at the Sculpture Center, New York (2013), the Serralves Museum, Porto (2014) and the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2015).