Fake Estate is pleased to announce the opening on May 21, 2009 of How many are several? How many are few? How big is big?, a kinetic installation by Hanna Sandin.

With How many are several? How many are few? How big is big?, Sandin inhabits the gallery space with a series of mobile sculptures. The quotidian objects (feather duster, air filter, Styrofoam cup, pumice stone) float, interact and converse, yielding a continuously shifting composition. Stripped of their function, the physical properties of the forms are emphasized, and the common objects are reduced to their most basic shapes, lines and colors. Long-winded titles connect the visual with the verbal, exhaustive permutations of self-descriptive qualities that are at once highly methodical and utterly nonsensical.

Linked to Chomsky’s “modularity” theory of mapping out the cognitive architecture of human brain function, Sandin’s work seeks to create visual representations of these ephemeral hierarchies. The linear nature of the connectivity through the segments of the mobile suggest a conspiracy of events by which there could be no other way in which things are seen, heard, smelled, spoken and experienced. The mobile as a whole suggests a syntax tree of meaning, evoking both the synaptic firing of the brain and a baby’s crib toy as a tool for early memory development. A series of events have occurred to create precisely that which lies before us, no other pattern could have led to this exact effect. Inside this minimized web of meaning, Sandin attempts to seek the origins and connections between etymology, evolution and touch upon the core of the human brain/soul.

Hanna Sandin received a BFA from RISD in 2003. Since, she has lived and worked in New York City. In 2005, she received the Emerging Artists Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park and participated in the 2005 EAF exhibition. Hanna also received a fellowship from the not-for-profit, A.I.R. Gallery where she had a solo exhibition, (ROOT(IN if)(..))), last June. Sandin is currently in residence in the Workspace program at LMCC, and will be participating in a group show curated by Michael Nevin, of Journal magazine/ gallery at Gallery Susan Tarasieve in Paris this June.

Fake Estate was launched in 2007 by Julia Trotta. The unusually small space, a former utility closet in the West Chelsea Arts Building, houses a series of focused, experimental projects. While some will call for intimate inspection, others will restrict viewers from entering the space. Fake Estate serves as an alternative to the traditional art venue, challenging both the artist and the viewer to think within the very small box.