Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin

Kneebone's luminous porcelain figures confront mortality and ecstasy with a stark, sculptural grandeur that fuses human fragility, mythic resonance, and unsettling beauty into a single, unforgettable vision.
Rachel Kneebone (born 1973, Oxfordshire) is a London-based artist internationally renowned for her porcelain sculptures that intricately fuse human, natural, and abstract forms in ways that are simultaneously serene and cacophonous, beautiful yet grotesque, otherworldly yet full of humanity. Exploring themes such as sexual desire, mortality, anguish, and despair, Kneebone's sculptures are contemporary visions of eternal truths, conveyed with endless imagination and impressive artistry in equal measure.
Launched in anticipation of '399 Days', Kneebone's latest presentation at White Cube, London, in summer 2014, this publication features works of art and installation documentation from the artist's acclaimed solo exhibition at Brooklyn Museum in 2012, which included eight of the artist's works in dialogue with fifteen bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin that she selected from the museum's collection. Curated by Catherine Morris, curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition was Kneebone's debut museum show, highlighting the two artists' shared interest in the representation of mourning, ecstasy, death, and vitality in figurative sculpture as well as offering an illuminating comparison of the artists' materials and working processes. Featuring a foreword by Catherine Morris and a text by Ali Smith, the publication is lavishly illustrated by photographs of the works by Stephen White and installation photography by Jon Lowe.