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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
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Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, ’12 (2015) exhibition photos

, 26 January 2016
photo

In the press release for Boy, ’12, a recent show of collaborative works by Menna Cominetti and Sophie Lee for Lock Up International in London, a drawing on top of some graffiti on top of some beige tiles is described as being a bison. An accompanying image shows the found bison; its tail a part of one of the spray-painted words and its body an abstract shape on top.

They talk about cycling round the city, “looking for texts to lift”. There are several ceramic and plaster casts in the space, whose four walls are corrugated iron; some hanging from the curvy metal and some sitting on the floor. They look as though they have been presented or held up to words, marks or accidental pictures before sucking them in, hard, leaving an imprint on or even through their back. They feel close to the things they have lifted. Some imprints are worm-like, or like zoomed in views of microscopic life.

Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, '12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, London.
Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee, Boy, ’12 (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Lock Up International, (London).

Lock Up International is a transient project, which occupies different storage units world wide. The particular unit for Boy, ’12 was in London and it looks cold, untouched, and has a low ceiling. Cominetti and Lee write in their press release about stockpiling “a collection of ghosts” and

“UUUUUUUUUs &
444444444s &
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3s“

The corners of their casts are slightly upturned and seem to float on the floor as well as the walls.

The work in Boy, ’12 takes and embodies, and then hovers in that moment, which is maybe akin to the feeling you have when you type with your finger on condensed bus glass, summoning the window as well as the person you “<3”, or when you mark “fresh concrete/ a tabula rasa / an immaculate slab”. “Nobody can resist that”.**

Exhibition photos, top right.

Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee’s Boy, ’12 was on at Lock Up International (London), running November 9 to 15, 2015.

Header image: Menna Cominetti + Sophie Lee (2015). Courtesy Lock Up International (London).

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Boy '12 Lock up International Menna Cominetti Sophie Lee
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