Roads are spaces which demark the material edge of the state. They are a place of governance, in which rights of way are determined, communicated, and enforced. Perpetually rebuilt only to disintegrate again, they capture the transient nature of configurations of authority and control. However, roads also constitute a site of resistance or disruption, beyond regulation. Climatic conditions hinder large development projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative, informal sidewalk settings re-engineer human ecologies in the neighbourhood, and protesters overflow city squares to call into question the dominant narrative set by its landmarks.
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The sculptures brought together in this exhibition direct the space around them, not unlike traffic signs. As if constructed to withstand a flood, the road-level sections are elevated on wooden legs, creating a raised archipelago of tarmac. Is the street a solid mass of continuity, or an aggregate of discrete entities moving through empty space?
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Which representation is real? This question reverberates through Josephine Baker’s work. Her sculptures are made from utilitarian materials; stand-ins for climactic movement or the raw matter they are made of. Water appears in its consistent absence, as a flowing force beyond the bounds of the man made; something that destabilises surfaces and reaches into the depths. Cables, branching out like natural currents, appear to gather energy from glassy stormclouds. A drain made of wood is soaking up sawdust. Everything is pointing to something else.
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Did you know that bitumen is a semi-solid form of petroleum? It’s semi-solid, and water- resistant. Meaning it’s able to resist the penetration of water to a high degree – but not entirely. Meaning asphalt roads are only cured on the surface, but remain sticky underneath.
Because of this, asphalt could be one of the world’s most recycled materials. Although a completely industrial product, it retains something of the organic life it was made from.
And here we are, walking on undead matter, in the entropy of late capitalism.
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Tile patterns mimic half-built (or half-destroyed?) walls. A traffic island, standing in the centre of the room, holds a chalk drawing on tiles that seems to fragment and come together simultaneously. This object is a chimera: part-vehicle, part animal, part-diagram. Handles protrude on both sides, as if meant to be carried as part of a ceremony.
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All these elements celebrate the tension between something spiritual and something utilitarian – what we ascribe meaning to, and what we do not.

— Johanna Theurer