The Crowd: Oren Pinhassi at St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate Church

A private tour at The Crowd – a site specific exhibition by artist Oren Pinhassi – was held at St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate in Marylebone.
The spectacular Victorian church presents a dramatic context for a new body of work created by Pinhassi during his Outset Residency in London this summer. The Tour included an introduction by Edel Assanti Gallery Co-Founder Jeremy Epstein.

About the Artist
Pinhassi’s installations examine the relationship between the human figure and the built environment by conjuring evocative sites that intersect public and private exchange. Past works explored bathhouses as spaces of vulnerability and sensuality, or cruising spots in nature as voyeuristic portals to erotic transformation. The sculptures in The Crowd invoke architectures of authority, incorporating features of manmade spaces designed to exert power over individuals within them. The ceremonial setting of St Cyprian’s Church reverberates through the sculptures in echoes of gothic arches, pediments, altarpieces, and the charged intimate space of confessionals. Quotations from civic institutions are equally abundant – voting booths, segregation cells, institutional desks. Points of bureaucratic exchange become expressions of bodily desire, as teller windows imply receptive orifices.

Oren Pinhassi graduated from the Yale School of Art in 2014. He has been awarded numerous prizes including The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2018; Fannie B. Pardee Prize, Yale School of Art, 2014; The Art Slant Prize, 2014; Shlomo Witkin Prize, 2011 and the Excellence Program Scholarship, Israeli Ministry of Education, 2011. Works and lives in New York City.