CANADA is pleased to present Afterhours, a solo exhibition by Sahar Khoury. Khoury makes sculptures that, upon first encounter, resemble vessels, baskets, screens and tapestries. These objects prefer distortion over function.  Although the sculptures are organized by the artist’s unique logic, they take pleasure in moments of material anarchy. Often these things or fragments get woven, fused with metal, coaxed upright and bent concave like pliant bodies.

One sculpture Untitled (cat with 13 belts) is made of three stacked ceramic vessels—red, black, and gold—each built with irregular cavities or protrusions. A cast bronze matte black cat poses at the top; her tail hovers weightlessly behind. (Khoury has sculpted her two cats many times, working directly from live poses and using paper and fabric to capture a rough sculptural form; this is her first time casting the forms in bronze.) Reinforcing the sculpture is a collection of tightly strung leather belts, their buckles and straps intertwine so that gold, pewter, and brown surfaces present in varying degrees of fashion, utility and bondage. 

In Untitled (1900-1999), Khoury presents a gate-like screen or portal. The surface is painted bone white, modulated, and sculpted into a window-like pattern. (The pattern is actually comprised of numerals, a whole century’s worth, scrunched together illegibly.) Inside, the object is collaged with reflective bike tape, light absorbs and bounces the characters, creating shadows and halos. 

These sculptures, pressed out of earth and a material curiosity, offer more mood than tangible narrative. Possibly we recognize their meaning through the body like feeling the weight of the cat on our laps or the cinch of a belt.