Rêverie, 2023
Found wood, beeswax, rusted canvas, string and rope
Rêverie began with Ophélie Napoli’s individual concerns and expanded into broader poetic and societal territories. Her formative years in dense urban environments like Hong Kong led her to develop a worldview in which humanity appears as “a single organism with cancerous growth patterns” (Vertovec, 2009, p.92).1 Raised between cultures, her “interstitial” perspective is conditioned by being “raised in a neither/nor world” (Pollock & Reken, 2001),2 generating work that mediates personal narrative with collective anxieties. The artist’s urban wandering, scouting materials like the box in this work, recalls “the Romantic tradition of wandering, predicated on Baudelairian spleen poetics” and is informed by “the fluid compositions of Debussy.”
Scientific Curiosity: Napoli’s practice embraces tactile methods such as vinegar-rusted surfaces and beeswax layering. Her “radically materialistic and corporeal” approach (Fowle, Sirmans & Morgan, 2016, p.40)3 enacts the passage of time directly on to the form of the work. The alchemical reactions become proxies for transformation, merging scientific precision and artistic intuition.
Existential Mythology: The egg on the edge of an open box invokes ambition and downfall, referencing Icarus and our tendency to leap before we understand. The work channels Sartre’s view of desire as “a lack of being… haunted… by the being of which it is desire” (Sartre, 2003, p.112).4 Its representational structure speaks to “the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant” (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1989, p.3),5 revealing the paradox of creation as destruction.
Psychic Configuration: Napoli’s surreal arrangements evoke a dreamlike psychological space, at the same time as placing the audience in God POV. The egg and box suggest unconscious repression and nascent potential, gesturing toward freedom and exposure. She engages with “the pity and terror of that eclipse” (Krauss, 2002, p.32),6 where form and matter dissolve into emotion. The work’s vertical suspension mirrors internal contradictions between control and vulnerability.
Merging Narratives: Rêverie draws on biblical and ecological imagery to reflect collapse and excess. The Rapture and Final Judgment loom as analogies for self-destruction, recalling Enlightenment’s failed promise: the very same rational thought, that was to liberate humankind, became the tool that enslaved it (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1989). Napoli’s sculpture consumes itself from within like a dying ecosystem, folding myth, theology, and entropy into a quiet meditation on ruin.
Notes:
1 Vertovec, S. (2009). Transnationalism. Routledge.
2 Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2001). Third Culture Kids. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
3 Fowle, K., Sirmans, F., & Morgan, J. (2016). STERLING RUBY. Phaidon.
4 Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Routledge.
5 Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1989). Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Verso.
6 Krauss, R. (2002). Eva Hesse, October Files. MIT Press.
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Close Considerations
Biomorphic Forms: Napoli’s symbolic pairing of the box and egg reflects tension between constraint and growth. The box embodies confinement, while the egg suggests fragility and potential. Their juxtaposition evokes a “vigorous biomorphism and sense of craft” (Pincus-Witten, 1987, p.47)1 and references societal hierarchies, like study of eusocial insects (Wilson, 1975, p.398).2
Visceral and Sexual Connotations: Rêverie’s precarious form suggests vulnerability and bodily tension. Philosopher Michel Foucault’s notion of institutional (prisons, hospitals, schools…) domination over the body: “the whole technology of power over the body” (1977, p.30);3 is echoed in the exposed defencelessness of the form/body vulnerable and subject to control. The unstable, fleshy aesthetic also recalls Sterling Ruby’s phallic sculptures, “stuffed with fibre...sexual, with holes and extensions” (Sirmans, 2016, pp.63, 73).4
Existential Marker: The Icarus myth underpins Napoli’s interest in human ambition and fragility. Her use of beeswax and iron oxide reflects bodily and planetary decay. Urban overload appears in chaotic compositions mirroring modern alienation (Simmel, 1990, p.257).5
Textures of Cruelty: Rust and organic decay dominate the surface, evoking “rusted iron, decaying, coagulating blood” (Pincus-Witten, 1987, p.51). Handmade marks and fingerprints suggest intimacy and timeworn authenticity, textured surfaces that “retain the marks” of life (Lippard, 1992, p.122)6 and “virtue of cruelty” in nature and culture (Nietzsche, 1967, pp.176–7).7
Spatial Engagement: Placed on the floor, Rêverie elicits bodily closeness and altered perception. Scale shifts between intimacy and monumentality, while shadow-play evokes “state of conscious and permanent visibility” (Foucault, 1977, p.201).
Notes:
1 Pincus-Witten, R. (1987). Postminimalism. Thames and Hudson.
2 Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard University Press.
3 Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan. Penguin Books.
4 Fowle, K., Sirmans, F., & Morgan, J. (2016). STERLING RUBY. Phaidon.
5 Simmel, G. (1990). The Philosophy of Money, ed. D. Frisby, trans. T. Bottomore & D. Frisby. Routledge.
6 Lippard, L. (1992). Eva Hesse. New York: Da Capo Press.
7 Nietzsche, F. (1967). Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern. George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Process
Accidental Discovery and Serendipity: Napoli’s process is guided by chance and material response. Her “cycles of generation and degeneration” (Pincus-Witten, 1987, p.51),1 enabling “immediacy in perception” (Elderfield, 1972, p.53)2 and “autoeroticism coupled with fanatical order” (Krauss, 2002, pp.51–2),3 or inward focus with a highly structured, almost obsessive, approach to form.
Texture and Material Experimentation: Techniques using vinegar and steel wool mimic natural corrosion. Her tactile process recalls Eva Hesse’s conversion of “abstract excess of quantity…into quality” (Pincus-Witten, 1987, p.11). Physical traces evoke history and “structures of repetition and transformation” (Nixon, 2002, p.176).4
Iterative and Reflective Creation: Through sketches and trial and error, Napoli reflects on each piece’s evolution. This dialogue refines intention and enhances the work’s conceptual depth, and its continuous transformation. Repetition enhances absurdity, echoing Richard Serra’s process, where “work comes out of work” and Nemser’s view that “repetition exaggerates meaning” (ibid., 2002, p.11).
Engagement with Physicality: Napoli navigates violence and care, producing forms with “complex purposes…asserted by one form” (Judd, 2016, p.143).6 She embraces chaos to unlock unexpected configurations, as “accident defines its own shape… the mind…awakens” (Focillon, 2007, p.38).7
Notes:
1 Pincus-Witten, R. (1987). Postminimalism. Thames and Hudson.
2 Elderfield, J. (1972). Essays on Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press.
3 Krauss, R. (2002). Eva Hesse, October Files. MIT Press.
4 Nixon, M. (ed.). (2002). Eva Hesse. Essays and interview by C. Nemser, R. Krauss, M. Bochner, B. Fer, A. M. Wagner, and M. Nixon. OCTOBER files 3. The MIT Press.
5 Judd, D. (2016). Complete Writings 1959–1975. Judd Foundation.
6 Focillon, H. (2007). In Praise of Hands: Manual Skill and Its Practice. Zone Books.
References
Eva Hesse: Napoli combines often found hard structures with organic forms, creating tensions that parallel Hesse’s “primitive or dreamlike incarnation” (Lippard, 1992, p.185),1 with “alive, sinewy threads” woven through structure (Elderfield, 1972, p.53).2
Surrealism: She channels subconscious impulses, similar to surrealist automatism. Her titles, “elaborate like that of the Dadaists” (Mussman, 1966),3 reinforce the intuitive balance between chaos and control (Lyotard, 1986, p.60; Nixon, 2002, p.175).4
Mythological Allegory: The feathered egg alludes to Icarus, depicting human overreach, linking myth to urban collapse, reflecting how “the metropolis fosters both individuality and anonymity” (Simmel, 1950, p.418),5 and mirroring environmental precarity.
Théodore Géricault: Drawing on philosophical and artistic sources, her works become “self-forming and self-identifying” (Schiff, 2015, p.121).6 Patination and decay echo Géricault’s shattered bodies “turned into object” (Nochlin, 2001, p.21).7
Containment and Transcendence: Grids, ladders, and sails speak to the ultimate human desire to expand and transcend. Each of Napoli’s works recalls “a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely larger fabric” (Krauss, 1978, p.8),8 expressing cyclical growth, decay, and ephemeral monumentality
Notes:
1 Lippard, L. (1992). Eva Hesse. New York: Da Capo Press.
2 Elderfield, J. (1972). Essays on Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press.
3 Mussman, T. (1966). "Duchamp and the Language of Puns", Artforum.
4 Nixon, M. (ed.). (2002). Eva Hesse. Essays and interview by C. Nemser, R. Krauss, M. Bochner, B. Fer, A. M. Wagner, and M. Nixon. OCTOBER files 3. The MIT Press.
5 Simmel, G. (1990). The Philosophy of Money, ed. D. Frisby, trans. T. Bottomore & D. Frisby. Routledge.
6 Schiff, R. (2015). Richard Serra: Forged Steel. David Zwirner.
7 Nochlin, L. (2001). The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. Thames & Hudson.
8 Krauss, R. (1978). "Grids" in October, pp.3–23.