“Constant growth as a fundamental watchword—such is the prospect of a vision of modernity that admits of neither doubt nor skepticism about the effects of economic intrusion into the spaces of our activities and lives. It is humor, rather than irony or cynicism, that distinguishes Rita McBride from many other artists of her generation. And if there is humor in the title General Growth, this is also a sign of the artist's involvement in the project of our modernity, where opposition no longer comes down to a choice between principles of mechanical and industrial production, and, on the other hand, biologic processes, natural-growth organics.
These principles and processes are echoed in Rita McBride's sculptures and installations, which have been developed against a background of the architectures and doctrines that have dominated her history, from the organicism of the Arts and Crafts movement to the biomorphism of "blob design", from functionalism to the aesthetics of our urban environments. McBride's works are the locus of reading which, by assuming sculptural form, address and question those architecturals phenomena that organize and structure the spaces and buildings of our cities. Prominent examples include Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, but McBride also considers space frame systems inherited from Buckminster Fuller, and the zones of false ceilings, pipes and skylights that characterize engineering and vernacular construction.
McBride's work gives these monuments of constructed comfort a ligibility of an entirely different order from that of nostalgia for the authentic object classified as a landmark; these machines of the everyday reappear at angles which render them, in their imposing ambiguity, seductive, attractive and problematic“.
Dirk Snauwaert, introduction from the book Croissance générale / General Growth.
