Plug In ICA’s sculptural exhibition ‘Betonwaves’ pieced together brick by brick

The sculptural works in Louise Witthöft and Rodney LaTourelle’s Betonwaves, on view now at Plug In ICA, could be ancient ruins. Or forms found in nature. They also could be walls and furniture.

Either way, they want you to think about where you are and the materials that surround you.

LaTourelle, who is from Winnipeg originally and has been based in Berlin for the past 20 years, and Witthöft are an artist duo known for their large-scale, site-specific installations that transform materials commonly used in infrastructure into art more concerned with people and the environment.

LaTourelle, who in 2023 was a researcher-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology, has a particular interest in working with cement — specifically geopolymer cement, a low-carbon alternative from the traditional Portland cement responsible for approximately eight per cent of global C02 emissions.

Betonwaves began in 2022 when LaTourelle was doing a residency with Mitkunstzentrale at the Haus der Statistik, a late-1960s constructed building in East Berlin once occupied by the Stasi, or the secret police of East Germany.

LaTourelle made sculptural works, inspired by designs by East German artist Egon Wrobel, using concrete aggregate salvaged from renovations to the Haus der Statistik mixed with geopolymer cement.

The material itself became an artistic statement referencing past, present and future, LaTourelle says.

LaTourelle wanted to do an iteration of the project in Winnipeg, again working with local conditions and recycled concrete. He knew the Hudson’s Bay Company building in downtown Winnipeg was going through a transformation after its history-making turnover to the Southern Chiefs’ Organization.

“That’s a huge symbolic situation in terms of the sociopolitical history of this place, especially,” he says, pointing out that Plug In’s proximity to the building also made it an ideal space to host Betonwaves.

“We’re dealing with the physical history and the political history at the same time through the material.”

The bricks that compose the works on view at Plug In are not bricks from the HBC building, though they might look like they could be. As with the German iteration of the project, LaTourelle combined the recycled crushed rocks and sand from the HBC building with geopolymer cement and then poured that mixture into brick-shaped moulds. (Other works use Tyndall stone, not from the HBC building itself, but from the same quarry.)

“It’s an experimental process. The bricks aren’t perfect,” he says.

They are also twice as heavy as a regular brick, some are missing corners and some are cracked — but that just gives them a worn character. The bricks are painted in a gradient of cobalt blue, which references a painting of morning glories by his grandmother — also included in the exhibition — but also makes the resulting sculptural works look like natural ice formations you might find near the real Hudson’s Bay.

“Brick is kind of symbolic. It’s an element that, when you put it together, becomes structural,” he says.

There’s the building of things — brick by brick — but also the dismantling of things, which LaTourelle is also interested in. That might mean actual structures themselves, yes, but also old ways of thinking, doing and creating.

“Also, thinking about the deconstruction and construction of this building, symbolically, in a post-colonial context,” he says.

“It’s a kind of ruin, but it’s being transformed.”

Betonwaves is on view until Nov. 1.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca