Artist to Watch: Oren Pinhassi Evokes Both Reverie and Grief with Monumental Sand Sculptures

Five years ago, Oren Pinhassi found himself wandering around an icy Washington Square Park in New York City. He was mesmerized by the piles of snow people had built. “The joy they had erecting the matter on the ground encouraged me to do the same at my studio,” says the sculptor. But instead of snow and ice, Pinhassi was intrigued by sand for its plethora of meanings. “Sand has so many contradictions—it is morbid, mythic, and playful,” explains the artist, who enjoys “letting a material take over the practice.”

So far, Pinhassi’s latest works have appeared in solo shows at galleries Helena Anrather and Lehmann Maupin in New York and Edel Assanti in London. This spring, the Brooklyn artist mounts his first institutional solo exhibition in the U.S. at the Arts Club in Chicago, “Into Your Arms Length,” on view from March 31 to August 8. Installed near the building’s famed Ludwig Mies van der Rohe steel-and-travertine staircase, the five new sand sculptures simultaneously evoke both reverie and grief.

The reclining Fragile Figure (Mother) captures a female figure resting her torso on a large rock. In lieu of a head, she has an elongated rectangular glass window, punctured with a circular gape. In Reception at Night, a figure made of bulbs holds an arched window close to its mouth. The bulging body is perched on an empty bed frame that alludes to abandonment and discomfort. Another, smaller glass bed emerges from the side of the frame, a suggestion of togetherness and even sexuality.

Pinhassi enjoys the kinship between glass and sand and how different reactions and processes yield such distinct results. “They are the same material, but they can damage each other,” he says of the elements, which produced pieces that are a distinct evolution from the flashy green or pink plaster sculptures that defined some of his earlier work. “The show reminds that it is imperative to keep imagining.”