RESIDENCY EXHIBITION SERIES
OCT 2 – NOV 2, 2026
Fanni Somogyi
softening blurry boundaries
“softening blurry boundaries” features sculptures prints by Artist-in-Residence Fanni Somogyi. The exhibition features biomorphic forms and imagery that explore permeable boundaries between bodies and the systems in which they exist. Using metal casting and electroforming, Somogyi’s sublime patinas and abstractions render visible the fragile entanglements among ecologies and infrastructures in the world around us.
"I’m drawn to the poetics of replication and transformation: how a cast surface can echo both landscape and body or how metal is both conduit and vessel, holding memory of its transformation." — Fanni Somogyi
Fanni Somogyi is a Baltimore-based artist exploring metamorphosis, resilience, and interdependence through biomorphic copper sculptures. Her work ranges in scale from tabletop pieces to large public sculptures. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Transformer (DC), Gallery Out of Home (HU), Cranbrook Art Museum (MI), Fjord (PA), Mother-in-Law’s Gallery (NY), New Collectors (NY), the Broom Factory (MI), Explora Salta (AR), Creative Alliance (MD), Latela Curatorial (DC) and Maryland Art Place (MD). She has been a resident at Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), Torpedo Factory Art Center (VA), and Annmarie Sculpture Garden (MD). Somogyi has been awarded two Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Material Awards and a Research Fellowship at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
About the Work
My conceptually-based work traces the porous boundaries between bodies, ecologies, and infrastructures. I work across sculpture and installation entangling organic and industrial structures in both gallery and public contexts. Through biomorphic hybrid forms, I explore bodily and environmental systems to ponder moments where the unseen becomes suddenly palpable. In Molting I, like ruptured spider sacks, the shells emerge from a copper pipe, attached to the wall. This point is the point of merging where the mechanical system of the building becomes organic. Molting I uses both a language of industry and nature as the copper pipe and fruits converge. The conflation of organic and industrial systems is important because we need more points of confusion between bodies as a way of knowing. Our membranes are permeable, and are prone to frequent rupture and exchange. Living with chronic pancreatitis, I have also intimately become aware of the complex workings of my body. My own digestive system hums along the heating, plumbing, and electrical currents around me.
Materially, my process involves casting, electroforming, and metal fabrication. I’m drawn to the poetics of replication and transformation: how a cast surface can echo both landscape and body or how metal is both conduit and vessel, holding memory of its transformation. Through the electroforming process, where copper erodes from an anode and grows onto the cathode (the sculpture), I work within cycles of decay and accumulation that reflect fungal proliferations. I pursue moments where thresholds blur, when decay becomes generative, and when mechanical structures begin to feel strangely biological. My work invites viewers to consider these fragile entanglements that we both embody and inhabit.