Her installations employ visual and linguistic ambiguity in order to explore the potential for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.
Marten’s sculptural installations often serve as repositories for disparate material combinations, resulting in an exhibition that calls into question our changing relationship to the readymade. Underscored by a process of collaged abstraction, her assemblages resonate with associative meaning. Creating a string of hieroglyphs or a kind of archaeological anagram, the work’s encrypted sequences are nevertheless driven by their own internal logic
“I’m really interested in the point at which things become husked down to geometric memories of themselves, where a house, for instance, a pair of legs or a cat could be communicated with huge economy and speed via just a few lines. The vector can become a mechanism of delivery. As incorporated extensions, even a simple nod towards a shape that might be reminiscent of a readymade form is quite literally a vocaliser of external things – an agent of the world outside art-making. And this is the point where you can use recognisable authority, the obstinate fact of a universally existent thing – an arm, a teapot, an alphabet – and extricate it from its own sense of intentionality.”
-http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/helen-marten-drunk-brown-house
I really loved this exhibition, I think its the only work I have ever seen where it honestly felt like these were abstract drawings or 2d works brought to life! Such a surreal feeling, if you stood back from afar, and squinted a little then they could easily be a huge 2d print. I think as there were Martens screenprints exhibited with the 3d work, then maybe this is why I was imaginigng it, but it was amazing! I loved it, and that there were 3d objects attatched to the 2d work aswell.. it felt like all barriers of 2d/3d had been crossed and actually it didnt really matter, and I think after reading what Marten says about her own work, this is what she was trying to convey, that its taking that meaning away from objects, and having them in this new alien format with no meaning or a new meaning. I was so taken back.. painted walnuts forever! amazing. Very inspiring.