It’s hard to believe that this sensuous sculpture of an invisible woman’s midsection, hidden in plain sight behind an apparently silken cloth, is made of solid marble. The Magritte-esque piece, titled La Sposa (“the wife”), was deftly carved by the British sculptor Ralph Brown and was first exhibited in the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition of 1999. Brown is fascinated by the movement and gestures of the human form, and their potential for expression—as evidenced in this spectral study, which, incidentally, reveals the subject’s shrouded posterior on its reverse.
