NEW YORK.- The World is Round features new commissions and recent works by Chris Hanson & Hendrika Sonnenberg, who has created works that explore collective consciousness and expression. Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg have been collaborating for over fifteen years. Originally from Canada, they now live and work in Brooklyn. They are best known for their meticulously crafted sculptures of recognizable objects, made out of unusual materials such as blue and green polystyrene foam. The things they depict are familiar but not wholly commonplace, like a Zamboni or a chain-link fence, and the sculptures' unusual materiality brings into question the objects' functions, their permanence or lack thereof, or their perceived role or symbolic place in society.

Soapbox, Hanson and Sonnenberg's sculpture for MetroTech, is a cast aluminum depiction of a trio of soapboxes. This new work relates to their recent sculptural series portraying press-conference microphones, in which the objects' unusable presence and air of forlorn abandonment served as oblique commentary on the current state of the press and the transmission of information. In contrast, the idea of getting up on a soapbox—either literally or metaphorically—to address a crowd is considered a fundamentally democratic form of expression, extemporaneous and unfiltered by media. By casting these otherwise utilitarian and flimsy objects in aluminum, Hanson and Sonnenberg venerate the most valued cultural ideal, freedom of speech, with a monument that could also serve as a functional speaking platform.

Hanson & Sonnenberg each received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1986 and 1987, respectively). Hanson received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1996) and Sonnenberg received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995). They have exhibited their work in numerous solo exhibitions including Store Gallery, London (2005); Cohan and Leslie, New York (2005); and White Columns, New York (2000).