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If you're planning washroom remodeling, it's advisable not to choose employing Lisa Herfeldt to handle it.

Truly, she's a whiz in handling foam materials, producing compelling artworks with a surprising art material. However longer you examine the artworks, the more you realise that an element feels slightly off.

The dense strands from the foam she produces extend over the shelves where they rest, drooping over the sides to the ground. Those twisted foam pipes swell before bursting open. Some creations escape their acrylic glass box homes entirely, evolving into an attractor for dust and hair. Let's just say the reviews might not get pretty.

“I sometimes have the feeling that items seem animated within a space,” remarks the German artist. Hence I turned to this foam material due to its this very bodily feel and appearance.”

Certainly one can detect somewhat grotesque in Herfeldt’s work, starting with the phallic bulge jutting out, hernia-like, off its base at the exhibition's heart, to the intestinal coils from the material that burst like medical emergencies. Along a surface, Herfeldt has framed images showing the pieces captured in multiple views: resembling wormy parasites picked up on a microscope, or formations in a lab setting.

What captivates me that there are things inside human forms happening that also have independent existence,” the artist notes. Elements that are invisible or command.”

Regarding elements beyond her influence, the poster for the show features a picture of water damage overhead in her own studio located in Berlin. The building had been erected decades ago as she explains, faced immediate dislike by local people because a lot of historic structures got demolished in order to make way for it. The place was run-down when Herfeldt – originally from Munich yet raised north of Hamburg before arriving in Berlin as a teenager – moved in.

This decrepit property proved challenging for the artist – it was risky to display her art works anxiously they might be damaged – but it was also compelling. Lacking architectural drawings on hand, nobody had a clue methods to address any of the issues which occurred. Once an overhead section at the artist's area was saturated enough it collapsed entirely, the sole fix involved installing it with another – perpetuating the issue.

In a different area, the artist explains dripping was extreme that a series of shower basins were set up above the false roof to divert leaks to another outlet.

“I realised that the building resembled an organism, a totally dysfunctional body,” the artist comments.

This scenario evoked memories of a classic film, the director's first 1974 film concerning a conscious ship that takes on a life of its own. As the exhibition's title suggests through the heading – three distinct names – more movies have inspired impacting the artist's presentation. The three names refer to the leading women from a horror classic, Halloween plus the sci-fi hit in that order. She mentions an academic paper from a scholar, outlining these “final girls” as a unique film trope – female characters isolated to overcome.

They often display toughness, reserved in nature enabling their survival because she’s quite clever,” says Herfeldt of the archetypal final girl. “They don’t take drugs or engage intimately. It is irrelevant the audience's identity, all empathize with the final girl.”

Herfeldt sees a parallel linking these figures with her creations – elements that barely holding in place despite the pressures affecting them. Does this mean the art focused on societal collapse beyond merely dripping roofs? Because like so many institutions, such components intended to secure and shield us from damage are actually slowly eroding within society.

“Oh, totally,” she confirms.

Before finding inspiration using foam materials, the artist worked with other unusual materials. Previous exhibitions featured tongue-like shapes made from the kind of nylon fabric found in on a sleeping bag or inside a jacket. Again there is the impression such unusual creations seem lifelike – a few are compressed resembling moving larvae, others lollop down off surfaces or extend through entries collecting debris from touch (Herfeldt encourages audiences to interact and soil the works). As with earlier creations, these nylon creations are similarly displayed in – and breaking out of – budget-style display enclosures. These are unattractive objects, which is intentional.

“These works possess a specific look that draws viewers compelled by, while also being quite repulsive,” she says with a smile. “It tries to be absent, however, it is highly noticeable.”

Herfeldt's goal isn't art to provide ease or visual calm. Rather, she aims for discomfort, odd, perhaps entertained. But if you start to feel water droplets overhead as well, don’t say this was foreshadowed.