![](https://images.prismic.io/ted-targett/1017efab-e2ec-40e5-a798-28d425493efa_*13.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&w=800)
Installation view: David Fesl
![](https://images.prismic.io/ted-targett/ca270712-562a-4923-b01e-6c842829cdf9_*09.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&w=800)
Installation view: David Fesl
Simply describing David Fesl’s sculptures would be inappropriate to their spontaneous craft. These delicate, palm-sized assemblages are formed with intense scrutiny and short bursts of activity over many long, staggered sittings; so, this companion piece spares chronology and instead offers words that mirror the processes he takes to make them:
Sift – scattered waste and found ephemera is surveyed on his studio desk, before being classified into elementary groups of shape, colour and form;
Contemplate – he’ll arrange his finds across empty desktops, some objects which have quietly lingered for years, others which hold his current attention;
Gather – in search of the enigmatic, he resists obvious connections, preferring contradictions of texture, whether soft or hard, rough or smooth, solid or friable;
Probe – some warrant David’s intrusion, as he’ll either fastidiously clean or tweak them to fit his vision; others are left in their found state, appreciating dirt or patina;
Surprise – he won’t plan a path to collecting his ingredients; each arrives within his grasp more fleetingly, burdened with their own identities and differences;
Stage – made of four to eight parts, he moves his initial visions back and forth between desk and wall, honing after much close inspection before deeming them complete;
Reflect – the gallery room they eventually hang in is, to David, central to what communication they impart – he asks his sculptures to be read together, as a seamless, unending story rather than even discreet chapters of a whole;
Obfuscate – he spares onlookers anything which can limit how they are perceived, the pieces revelling as, simply, ‘Untitled’, as if continuations of the same circuitous sentence;
Challenge – here, he has placed a few pieces on a long, purpose-built shelf, which obstructs entry into the first doorway;
Skitter – for viewers, this display encourages us to dart our attention above, across and sideways, taking heed of the room’s architecture, an effect David knowingly plots beforehand;
Chance – as well as the objects he stumbles upon, other elements he can foresee but can’t control await – light, for instance, and as vibrant Lisbon days emerge the shifting sunshine reveals his exhibition, like once-lost relics now under a spotlight, the minutiae of their details becoming clearer as the hours pass, until they retreat into shadows at nightfall, as if buried again in the earth where once they were found.
![](https://images.prismic.io/ted-targett/9e1fa35c-4adb-4198-b1d7-5af2fec97d85_*11.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&w=800)
Installation view: David Fesl
![](https://images.prismic.io/ted-targett/38608ba2-759b-4a96-8925-634dd1321acf_*17.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&w=800)
Untitled, 2022, round handle, plastic bottle cap, trilobite stone, Brachychiton seed pods, bubble blower, ink, 10 × 11.2 × 5.4 cm