SOPHIE TAPPEINER presents sculptures by Albin Bergström and paintings by Sophie Reinhold. Both artists tackle the domestic commonplace with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, particularly observing how objects function as signifiers of social and economic status. Their transformation of these subjects acts as a subversive manoeuvre, disrupting the values and associations attached to them.

Bergström’s candelabras take an item associated with refinement and opulence, magnifying it to slapstick proportions and rendering it in hay, an organic material connected to rural life and agriculture. This playful approach to using non-noble sculptural materials creates a chasm; it feels almost incendiary in its intention.

Reinhold similarly negotiates status through the motif of the chair, cutting through the pictorial field and asserting its presence. While the chair functions as a painterly gesture, Reinhold’s process is grounded in the material construction of the surface itself. She takes the materiality of the surface as the starting point for building her paintings: working on jute with layers of marble powder, oil and pigment, she builds up, sands down and partially removes the surface. The image emerges through this process of accumulation and erasure.

Hierarchies and value are examined through a distinct attention to process, material and scale, revealing the social fabric which contains us. The works require the viewer to look again at the objects and spaces we encounter every day, and to consider how their materials, values and contexts shape the way we perceive them.