Near the start of Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s new show, ‘A Leaf Shapes the Eye’, a variety of small, strange objects are scattered across a white table: hybrid cigarette packaging formed of two hexagonally cut packs; shredded strips of magazine bundled like a plant; seeds and other undeclared natural spherical forms cut with geometric patterns; leaves with laser-cut circles scarring their surface; and several contorted and twisted twigs. It is an eclectic mix of found and manipulated objects displayed as an artistic space of exploration, with ideas transposed from studio to gallery.
Steegmann Mangrané’s show is a 25-year survey of the Spanish artist’s practice spread over two floors of Kiasma, the Finnish national gallery of contemporary art. He is an artist interested in extracting or revealing the uncanny from objects and places, not only to create curious aesthetic form but to deeply penetrate ideas of nature. Those contorted twigs on the table do just this, each clinically split in half along the stem before the artist uses wire to reconstruct it, a void separating the slivers.
