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The French artist Caroline Mesquita is regarded as a key interpreter of contemporary sculpture and its performative qualities. She creates sculptural bodies reminiscent of humans, animals and various hybrid creatures. These bodies are formed from brass and metals, and, despite the durability of the materials used, are characterized by a lightness and playful potential that animates them\u2014almost as if they were living puppets. For Verdet Bath<\/em>, Mesquita creates a bathing spa consisting of a swimming pool, changing rooms and drinking fountains, in which a multitude of her creatures and their audience cavort.<\/p>\n Caroline Mesquita\u2019s work encompasses sculptures, murals, large-scale installations with integrated architectural elements, as well as film and video works. She creates her sculptural works from copper and brass sheets, using various oxidation techniques. Mesquita is particularly drawn to metal, a traditional sculptural material, but she brings her unique approach to it. While she works with the material through intentional processes, she also allows it to transform naturally in terms of its composition and design, giving it a life of its own. She thereby ties it with figurative tendencies in modernist sculpture, reminiscent of positions such as Sophie Taeuber Arp or Emmy Hennings. Moreover, the material of copper and brass sheets also played a key role in American Minimal Art, from which she also draws inspiration. Through her remarkable style and stage-like arrangements, she animates her otherwise inanimate metal figures. In doing so, she humorously tackles pressing contemporary issues, such as the relationship between humanity, nature, and technological progress.<\/p>\n HALLE F\u00dcR KUNST Steiermark is delighted to present the artist\u2019s first solo exhibition in Austria, featuring expansive interventions of both existing and newly produced sculptural works. The exhibition creates a scene filled with numerous metal bodies that, like in a triadic ballet, interact in a setting reminiscent of a thermal or steam bath. In total, approximately 40 works will be displayed in the exhibition rooms, adapted to the building\u2019s late modern architecture with the result that they are woven into a new narrative. Mesquita also introduces moments that play with themes of intimacy, nudity, and voyeurism, adding a dreamlike quality to the entire installation.<\/p>\n