Christopher Hodges 'Balance'

Together, these forms seem to carve up space: as much about the spaces between as the things in themselves. It’s not surprising, then, that Hodges will often refer to his sculpture as ‘cut-outs’, a reference to Matisse’s paper collages, but also because they are ‘cut-out’ of steel, just as the final steel forms cut into air.

Historically, many of Hodges’ sculptural works have retained a sense of the hand-drawn line, translated into three-dimensions. These sculptures are “actually a direct translation of paintings into space, the line into space…. I can do a freehand drawing of a line and the laser will make that same line in hard steel for me.” For instance, the looping lines of sculptures from the late 1990s register a gesture, marked first on a piece of paper. Whilst some have steel lines looping over and behind each other, others remain perfectly flat, depth denied at the points of intersection.

As Hodges’ visual language has evolved his forms have continued to refine, the gestural merging with a precise, but organic geometry – loop becoming curve becoming the straight edges and sharp angles of this current exhibition. The painterly emerges in other ways – coloured light bouncing onto walls, shimmer of stainless steel.

As his work progresses Hodges is always building upon what he has done before, seeing where familiar forms might lead him. To take a very literal example, the 2013 sculpture ‘Crow’, precursor to this most recent body of work, was constructed out of the pieces of steel left over from ‘Garden’ (pictured left), a large-scale cut-out playing angular edges against the curvilinear lines of a flower. In such works, the relationship between positive and negative space,