Release, Hold, Let Go

“The ceramic bodies become proxies for our own, creating clouds of warmth that might blur the boundary between the object and the body, between what gives warmth and what receives it.”

In Release, Hold, Let Go a collection of ceramic sculptures connected to a warm water source invites you to come closer. For this new work, visual and sound artist Maika Garnica departs from several elements deeply familiar to her — clay, water, sound — to further develop them into an entirely new direction. Through the addition of heat and a striking increase in scale, Garnica’s ceramic sculptures no longer stand before us as objects, but as bodies beside us. They exert a quiet pull and ask: come closer.

What connects us when matter carries, circulates, and releases heat? Can we also understand our own bodies, coursing with the same fluid at a comparable temperature, as vessels for warmth? We, too, are constantly giving off heat—usually unnoticed and invisible, but sometimes briefly perceptible in the cold winter air, sometimes noticed and felt when another being is nearby, barely or more intensely touching one another.

Like ours, these fragile bodies exchange heat, but according to a different rhythm: made of clay, they warm up slowly and retain heat longer. Garnica’s sculptures remind us that presence is not only seen, but—like sound—also felt. Can you handle them with care? Do you feel their warmth penetrating your skin? Will you, slowly, warm them in turn with your body? And through them, all the others who come closer?