Philip Seibel’s sculptures acquire their special tension from the combination of industrial-looking surfaces with restrained and precise painterly settings. In their cell-shaped construction and their positioning in the space, the sculptures look like something between an altar and a ventilation system, shifting between the polar opposites of extremely fetishized objects and ones that are hidden by their functionality. As Seibel notes, the works are driven by a desire to “create a presence of something that remains hidden.”