Argument in the Age of Desolation, 2023
Found wooden table, beeswax, sewn fabric, string and rope
The title Argument in the Age of Desolation reflects a way towards the self-destructive drive and ambition to assert ourselves regardless of the precarity of where we stand (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1989, p.6).1 Ophélie Napoli’s work registers this conflict: even in the most desolate circumstances, the human spirit strives to express, describing both creation and breakdown.
Rupture: The vertical grid, stitched with rust and thread, gives form to a peculiar idiosyncratic space between suppression and release. Its weighted, sagging form resists categorisation, suggesting structural instability and a refusal of equilibrium.
Urban Decay: Napoli’s work is autolectic, emerging from the materiality and process itself (Schiff, 2015, p.112),2 mirroring the overstimulation of modernity. Her decaying forms play on how “all things are experienced… as not worth getting excited about” (Simmel, 1990, p.256),3 yet still cling to ruin with quiet resilience.
Anatomical Dissonance: Turning the body inside out, Napoli “furthers the mutilation… whereby what we see… is not some recognisable physical human element” (Nochlin, 2001, p.18).4 These fragments resist objecthood, demonstrating French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s proposition that “what-is-not determines what-is” (Sartre, 2003, p.111).5
Formal Resistance: The Argument in the Age of Desolation’s absurdist tone, reflected both in her work and prosaically in their respective titles (Pincus-Witten, 1987, p.51),6 disrupts resolution. As art critic Lucy Lippard notes, “absurdity takes the place of wit… there are a lot of loose ends” (1992, p.185),7 reinforcing Napoli’s refusal of stable form or closure.
Notes:
1 Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1989). Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Verso.
2 Schiff, R. (2015). Richard Serra: Forged Steel. David Zwirner.
3 Simmel, G. (1990). The Philosophy of Money, ed. D. Frisby, trans. T. Bottomore & D. Frisby. Routledge.
4 Nochlin, L. (2001). The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. Thames & Hudson.
5 Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Routledge.
6 Pincus-Witten, R. (1987). Postminimalism. Thames and Hudson.
7 Lippard, L. (1992). Eva Hesse. New York: Da Capo Press.
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Close Considerations
Grid Framework: Ophélie Napoli’s iron grid is a site of dismantling, where “biomorphic relief elements” (Pincus-Witten, 1987, p.47)1 disrupt structural coherence. The grid becomes a site of instability and disintegration, subverting its typical associations. As the art history doyenne Rosalind Krauss notes, “the grid operates from the work of art outward, compelling our acknowledgment of a world beyond the frame” (Krauss, 1978, p.8).2
Material Tension: The combination of rusted metal, saturated fabric, and frayed stitching produces a sculptural tension between softness and hardness, fragility and endurance. The weight of each element exaggerates the sensation of disintegration, creating a parasitic entity consuming its own body and making visible the instability of form and surface.
Vertigo: By suspending the work at bodily scale, Napoli induces “a sense of vertigo,” pushing viewers into an intimate confrontation with collapse. The work both invites and denies access; “the viewer is again and again reached out to, or refused access to the sculptural object” (Nixon, 2002, p.173),3 mirroring states of psychological fluctuation and existential instability.
Fragmented Flesh: The sutures and bloodstained textures evoke the violent transformation of the human body, recalling The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19) and La Reine Margot (1994). Napoli’s work “dismembers and reconfigures bodily forms, refusing stable subjecthood” (Nochlin, 2001, p.21),4 aligning bodily fragility with historical cycles of destruction and renewal.
Metaphysical Mutation: The work’s instability parallels postminimalist practices that embrace unpredictability and transformation. “Postminimalism emphasises temporality,” writes art critic Robert Pincus-Witten (1987, p.12),5 framing the artist herself as mutable material. As Michel Houellebecq suggests, “metaphysical mutation… destroys and rebuilds,” just as Napoli’s piece resists resolution, perpetually forming and unforming (2001, p.4).6
Notes:
1 Pincus-Witten, R. (1987). Postminimalism. Thames and Hudson.
2 Krauss, R. (1978). "Grids" in October, pp.3–23.
3 Nochlin, L. (2001). The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. Thames & Hudson.
4 Nochlin, 2001, p.21
5 Pincus-Witten, R. (1987). Postminimalism. Thames and Hudson
6 Houellebecq, Michel. (2001). Atlas. Flammarion
Process
Found Form: Napoli begins with found industrial remnants, materials marked by time and decay, which she cuts, alters, and weaves into new configurations. She employs a found grid frame “from the dumpster” which she cut up and weaved with rusted canvas, ropes, and strings. This transformation suggests the randomness and fragility of identity, where the process involves experimenting with found objects, subjecting them to cycles of evolution.
Accumulation and Erosion: Layering corroded metal, wire, and textile, Napoli creates surfaces that sag, rupture, and retain damage like scarred flesh. The surface is “painterly… dented and bent, as though it could take whatever life gave it but would retain the marks” (Lippard, 1992, p.122).1 This approach “explores cycles of growth and putrefaction,” where seams threaten collapse but hold fast—just barely.
Spatial Tension: The work hangs in the space untethered to the wall or floor, hovering. It is suspended to create a ghostly, abstract effect, emphasising the tension between gravity and decay. Threads extend beyond the frame, expanding the grid, and turning the sculpture into an active, shifting presence.
Non-Linear Assembly: The artist’s process is iterative and intuitive, where “the whole thing is ordered yet they’re not ordered” (Nemser, 2002, p.10).2 Each cut and stitch is part of a “non-logical operation,” in which “she activates… the interconnectedness of creation and destruction.” Her metal-cutting practice becomes an act of ironic defiance, the artist carefully and ironically destroying the original object.”
Repetition: Like Eva Hesse, Napoli’s exaggerated repetition and layered deconstruction resist closure, through multiple layers of destruction and reconstruction. Echoing Nietzsche's “morality neuters ambition,” her destructive gestures reclaim agency. The final structure, wounded and enduring, is like its placement suspended between ruin and rebirth.
Notes:
1 Lippard, L. (1992). Eva Hesse. New York: Da Capo Press.
2 Nemser, Cindy. "A Conversation with Eva Hesse (1970)." In Eva Hesse 1936-1970, edited by Mignon
References
Napoli After Hesse: Ophélie Napoli extends Eva Hesse’s postminimalist legacy by beginning from the contradiction with absurdity itself. While Hesse’s focus on contradictions and oppositions is present in Napoli’s work, Napoli takes it further, beginning at the absurd level and unifying the opposites. Her process, like Hesse’s, involves repetition, exaggerating meaning through multiple layers of destruction and reconstruction, collapsing binaries into a grotesque synthesis of collapse and endurance.
Fragility to Industrial Entropy: While Hesse reached toward instability, Napoli foregrounds entropy within the potential for transformation. Her materials such as grids, ropes, rusted metals subvert postminimalist softness, presenting decay as the origin point. As Hesse noted, she sought contradictions, whereas Napoli begins within absurdity and moves toward synthesis.
Rosalind Krauss’s Grid Undone: Where Rosalind Krauss positioned the grid as “anti-natural, anti-mimetic, anti-real” (1978, p.3),1 Napoli corrupts this rationalist ideal. Her grids erode, weep, and fray, replacing “an ordered, infinite field” with tangible disorder and entropy. Uneven dyeing and exposed threads introduce variations in luminosity, emphasising the instability and corporeal collapse of the structure.
Insect Colonies: Drawing on Edward O. Wilson and Maurice Maeterlinck, Napoli reimagines the grid as a metaphor for collective behavioural decay. Her work mirrors the ant mill, a loop of directionless repetition, and echoes Wilson’s vision of “diffuse organisms” (1975, p.399),2 treating sculpture as an ecosystem of interdependent, degenerating parts. Motifs inspired by insect colonies reveal social order as both necessity and trap.
Géricault and the Biomorphic: Like Théodore Géricault’s corpses in Scène de Naufrage (1818-19) , Napoli’s forms disassemble the human body into fragments; but where the former renders decay, she begins with it. Her biomorphic elements “turn grotesque fragments of living creatures into subjects rather than objects” (Krauss, 2002, p.32),3 occupying vertical space in a gesture of partial reclamation. In doing so, she “embraces and subverts” the logic of bodily ruin (Nochlin, 2001, p.21).4
Notes:
1 Krauss, R. (1978). "Grids" in October, pp.3–23.
2 Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard University Press.
3 Krauss, R. (2002). Eva Hesse, October Files. MIT Press.
4 Nochlin, L. (2001). The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. Thames & Hudson.