CRITICAL REFUGE: SCULPTURES BY MOHAMAD HAFEZ
Between Love and War
2012
Plaster, paint, rusted metal, found objects, rigid foam
26" x 48" x 14"
While its title poses an opposition between two sides, Between Love and War presents a scene of suspension. The sculpture installs a drama of above and below: a single pitched roof reaches up to a steep height while gnarled roots proliferate downwards. Between these, new spaces are made from where walls have gone, so that exposed architecture become new supports. A red liturgical robe hangs on a rod suspended between two discontinuous walls. Behind a bloom of red anemones, a screen of wired mesh is echoed in the imprinted plaster above and barred window atop, constituting a facade of permeable layers. Between Love and War suggests that such a dichotomy (as if love were opposite or a solution to war) occludes the needs of those who must dwell and live in the spaces created between -- and despite -- impossible opposites.