Tag Archives: Sculpture

Tara Donovan – By Tanner Poole

Tara Donovan is an american sculpture from Queens, New York who specializes in monotonous hand-crafted sculptures that use unnatural items created by man to express in an abstract way how nature grows. By closely studying the materials she obtains, Donovan muses how each individual item can be expressed in ways outside of its given purpose. In her artwork, Donovan uses items such as Scotch tape, mini golf pencils, toothpicks, drinking straws, slinkys, and Styrofoam cups to create her earthly masses.

Donovan received her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from the Corcoran of Art and Design in Washington D.C. and her Masters of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University (“ArtNet: Tara Donovan” 2020). Donovan’s work has gained her praise, recognition, and awards; she has received the Alexander Calder Foundation’s first annual Calder Prize, and the MacArthur Fellowship, and has had her work shown in the Pace Gallery in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (“ArtNet: Tara Donovan” 2020).

Donovan’s sculptures, which are specifically site specific sculptures, use day-to-day items to mimic what it’s natural counterpart would appear as in nature. For one example, Donovan recreated a beehive by attaching many Styrofoam cups together.

In an interview with New York Times, Donovan states, “I think of my process almost as a re-manufacturing of a manufactured material, and I think that it’s inevitable that what results goes back to nature. I never have a set idea in mind of what an overall composition will look like; it really grows out of a doing and making and a sense of play and an idea of chance.” Examples of the “re-manufacturing of a manufactured material,” are shown below:

This sculpture used styrene plastic cards.

“Untitled,” 2014-2015.Credit…Ron Blunt / Courtesy of the artist and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This sculpture used circular cut Mylar that was folded into cones then formed into a sphere. The Mylar causes the light do reflect different shades of white, silver, and black.

“Untitled (Mylar),” 2011-2013.Credit…Mick Vincenz / Courtesy of the artist and Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck.

This installation used slinkys!

“Untitled,” 2015.Credit…Gary Mamay / Courtesy of the artist and the Parrish Art Museum.

Works Cited

“Tara Donovan, A sculpture Who Finds Beauty in the Mundane.” The New York TImes. Accessed 31 March 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/books/tara-donovan-fieldwork.html

“Tara Donovan – artnet.” artnet. Accessed 31 March 2020. http://www.artnet.com/artists/tara-donovan/

Francesco Albano /// Dania Hubard

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In 1976, the artist known as Francesco Albano was born in the town of Oppido Mamertina located in southern Italy. At the age of 12, Albano was apprenticing underneath the artist Stefano Albano, his father. Francesco started his artistic journey at a young age and developed his art with the guidance of his father. He finished in apprenticeship in 1996 and then joined the Fine Art University of Carrara to finish his studies; which he graduated four years later. He traveled quite a bit after that, though at this time he is based in Buenos Aires. Albano is a pretty accomplished artist. In 2005, he won the National Prize of Arts for one of his sculptures.

Francesco’s art is very visceral and draws in the audience’s attention with its grotesque view of the human body. At first his sculptures seem like a gross perversion of the human form and twists it into an unrecognizable piece made of flesh and bone, but there is so much more to his work and what it is saying about humans to their core. His art explores many themes of mental illness and is basically a visual representation of the emotions of loneliness, emptiness, and fear.

“What deeply interests me is how the physical appearance of the human body can be affected by the psychic and mental state and how the disarray of these states can reshape the body; how it can be annihilated by social pressure, how a specific unrest can deform, distort, void and overfill the body; its container. Through my work, I record experiences and the people around me. My sculptures are fantasies-phantoms that depict desire and emptiness.”
(Bahadur, 2017)

Currently, some of Albano’s artwork is available to purchase. His pieces are being sold for as much as $1,000 to $15,000. https://www.artsy.net/artist/francesco-albano

**Study of Head of Shouting Man** (2017)

Albano, F. (2009). TWELVE YEARS AGO NEW YEAR’S FEAST. [online] francesco albano’s blog. Available at: http://albanofrancesco.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].

Albano, F. (2014). Francesco Albano. [online] Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=478vTmTSF9M [Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].

Artsy.net. (2010). Francesco Albano – 12 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy. [online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artist/francesco-albano [Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].

Bahadur, T. (2017). Going Deeper into Fear, Emptiness, Incapability: The Visceral Sculptures of Francesco Albano. [online] On Art and Aesthetics. Available at:

Going Deeper into Fear, Emptiness, Incapability: The Visceral Sculptures of Francesco Albano

[Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].

Yayoi Kusama – Marsha Itsaleumsack

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Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese woman who made her title as an avant-garde artist, raised in Matsumoto before moving to New York in 1958, as recommended by her therapist who said her dysfunctional family would swallow her whole. Kusama was a diamond in the rough, having at first had to use scraps she found and mud sacks to craft her art after her mom threw out all of her supplies. Her mother condemned Kusama’s passion for art which only fueled her further. Her most popular works that gained traction delve into psychedelic and what she calls, a ‘self obliteration’. Many if not all of her works are hallucinatory projections and this notably comes in the form of polka dots — her trademark.

Infinity Mirrored Room – Brilliance of the Souls by Yayoi Kusuma

Yayoi Kusama, Transmigration , 2011

“These rooms reflect all of her elements: her obsessions, her accumulations, her infinite repetitions. And it’s all very bodily and immersive,” Yoshitake said.

But there was a time before she adapted to the new scene. Her works when she was still a fresh and new, innovative artist had much to do with innate promiscuity and elemental nudity. Kusama abhorred sex, lost and disoriented with the concept of skinship and intimacy, stemming from childhood trauma. This trauma translated into her early works, many of which that puts multitudes of phallic objects on display to more performative pieces of nude men and women alike.

Yayoi Kusama posing with , New York. ©Yayoi Kusama and Yayoi Kusama Studios Inc.

A nude happening and fashion show at Kusama’s Studio, New York, 1968

”I don’t know how long I’m going to survive even after I die; there is a future generation that is following in my footsteps,” she said, sitting in the bright open space that is her new gallery in central Tokyo. “I would be highly honored if people would like to look at my work and be moved by my work.”

Marela Zacarías – Tiffany

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Post By Tiffany Brady

Marela Zacarías is an artist from Mexico City, Mexico, specializing in the merging of sculpture and paint in a rather flowing way. Zacarías’s work embodies the challenge of making a sculpture fold and fall in the same way fabric may, while also filling her pallets full of color and vibrancy. Along with a large amount of pigment Zacarías uses, she also fills her winding sculptures with geometric shapes and designs.

According to Zacarías’s profile written on Art21, most of her works are, “built from window screens, joint compound, and polymer before being painted in bold, geometric, abstract patterns.”

As you would assume, Zacarías’s process for making these intricately wound pieces is “labor- and research-intensive,” as claimed on her own artist site. Most of her pieces are even designed for the exhibit she is working for at the time.

Art21 said, “Zacarías’s works are often inspired by the sites for which they are planned, such as Works Progress Administration murals in the Brooklyn Museum, Mayan textile colors for an installation in Mexico, and a map of Brooklyn for a new hotel in the borough.”

Not only has Zacarías taken part in numerous exhibitions, but she has also held solo exhibits and even commissioned large-scale permanent pieces for “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Facebook, the William Vale in Brooklyn, and the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico,” according to her site.

The Brooklyn Paper also looked into these lively sculptures, saying, “Like much of Zacarias’s work, the sculptures are meant to interact with the architecture of a specific communal space — the pieces, resembling huge, living blankets, seem to have just finished crawling the walls and balconies of the museum’s cavernous entrance lobby.”

Zacarías’s way of breathing life into her sculptures translates with every twist and turn of the surprisingly harden sculptures she manifests.

Coatlicue’s Return: Solo Exhibition at Wasserman Projects in Detroit

Katharina Grosse – Lainey Crawford

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Katharina Grosse is a German artist born in 1961 who combines a wide array of bright colors with architecture, sculpture, and paintings to create massive visual installations. Before her career took flight, she studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, she pursued a degree in painting. She now teaches at the university, but continues to explore and display her artistic ability.

Though considered a painter and sculptor, traditional painting is not what she is known for. Her techniques primarily consist of spray paint to create a specific movement among her pieces. The ideas that may come to mind when viewing Grosse’s works may resemble psychedelics as the color schemes and motions present are extremely captivating. Her installations have lead to major accomplishments and awards, such as the Oskar Schlemmer Prize, Fred-Thieler-Preis, Stipendiaten der Stiftung Kunstfonds, and the Villa-Romana-Stipendium, Florence. Her works have been displayed in a multiple museums, such as the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland.

Grosse often calls psychology into question as her works challenges the reality of things as her pieces are much larger than what you would normally see. Viewers are immersed in a world of art that physically surrounds them rather than sits on a wall to be stared at. Her work can be described as an environment as so much space can be taken up, but these environments explore hard-to-imagine dimensions and illusions, greying the line between imagination and reality as viewers can almost be swallowed by the works. Grosse is a very unique artist that utilizes a space in a very engaging and intense way using a multitude of colors and forms that sometimes include furniture and often contrast each other.

20130418075614-two_younger_women_come_in__02 — Two Younger Women Come In and Pull Out a Table

They Had Taken Things Along to Eat Together

The Horse Trotted Another Couple of Metres, Then It Stopped

Works Cited :

https://art21.org/artist/katharina-grosse/

http://www.artnet.com/artists/katharina-grosse/?type=paintings

https://www.katharinagrosse.com/

https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/katharina-grosse

https://renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/454/katharina-grosse-atoms-inside-balloons/

Jeff Koons – Kelby Fischer

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Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania 1955. He received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976. He had his first solo exhibition in 1980 but has been showcased internationally and holds three spots in the top-ten list of most expensive artwork by living artists. He is most known visually by his larger-than-life colorful, reflective balloon animal depictions. Labeled in the art community as a Neo-pop or post-pop artist, Koons dislikes labels and the idea of his artwork having hidden meanings and wants the view to make their own judgement based on first glance perceptions.

His notable works are Rabbit (1986) which in May 2019 sold for $91.1 million and became the record holder for most expensive artwork by living artists, followed by Balloon Dog (Orange) (1994-2000) one of a five-part series, sold for $58.4 million in November 2013, and then Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold) (1994-2006) which sold for $23.6 million in November of 2007.

(Rabbit (1986), stainless steel, 41 x 19 x 12 inches. Photo © Jeff Koons)

(Balloon Dog (Orange) (1993-2000), mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 121 x 143 x 45 in.)

(Hanging Heart, (Magenta/Gold) (1994-2006), mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 114 5/8 x 110 1/4 x 40 inches, height of ribbon varies. Photo © ABC News)

My personal favorite is a piece of Koon’s titled Puppy (1992), a standalone piece that stands permanently installed at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in Bilbao Spain, made of stainless steel, wood, soil, mesh, an internal irrigation system, and of course living, blooming flowers.

(Puppy (1992), stainless steel, wood (at Arolsen only), soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, live flowering plants, 486 x 486 x 256 inches. Photo © Jeff Koons)

My favorite couple of sculptures of his are in a series called “Antiquity” and convey traditional figures in that “neo-pop” way of bright colors and reflective material.

(Ballerinas (2010-2014), mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 100 x 70 x 62 inches. Photo © Jeff Koons)

(Pluto and Proserpina (2010-2013), mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, live flowering plants,129 x 65 3/4 x 56 5/8 inches. Photo © Jeff Koons.)

(Woman Reclining (2010-2014),granite, live flowering plants, 84 x 88 1/2 x 46 1/4 inches. Photo © Jeff Koons)

The reason I chose Jeff Koons is my love for his living sculpture Puppy, and it’s wild nature. No artist can predict how nature is going to grown or change, flourish or die, which makes the essence of the piece uncontrollable beyond the boundaries of the very skeleton of the sculpture. My reasoning behind the selections of statues from the Antiquity series shows the diversity of his sculptures, living flowers incorporated often, from solid granite to shiny metallic figures.

Ernesto Neto – Jill Van Domelen

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Ernesto Neto

Ernesto Neto is a Brazilian Conceptual artist who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His main focus is installations and sculpture. He began pursuing art in the 1960’s when he enrolled in art school. He realized sculpture was what he wanted to do after taking a clay workshop. His first solo exhibition was at the Petite Galerie in 1988 in Rio. Along with having his studio there, he also runs a gallery called A Gentil Carioca featuring new Brazilian artists. His work is now featured in many esteemed galleries including places such as New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and more.

Neto’s work is largely about interaction. It is inspired by things like nature and the human body, specifically skin and the body’s relationship with water. In an interview Neto says, “There is always an edge between one thing and another – a membrane. My work is very much about this limit between one side and the other”. Some subjects that influence his work as well is his known interest in anthropology, cultural history, and physics. Neto’s works consist of fabrics, transparent, stretchy material, styrofoam pellets and spices to create his installations. The viewer is meant to feel, touch, and sometimes smell each piece he makes. He provides many ways to interact with his pieces, extending so far as to one piece that you can actually swim in.

One work called Mother body emotional densities, for alive temple time baby son displays his combination of fabric and spices. The fabric is polyester Lyrca and gives the impression of skin. The skin bags at\re filled with spices such as turmeric, clove, cumin, ginger, pepper, and annatto. This work was featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.

Image result for Léviathan Thot — *Léviathan Thot Europe at ‘le Panthéon’, Paris*

Another work called Léviathan Thot featured in Europe at ‘le Panthéon’, Paris is a good example of the use of line and shape as well as unity and space. The materials used is lycra tulle, polyamide fabric, and styrofoam balls. The way the fabric is stretch and thin at the top and enlarged at the bottom by the placement of styrofoam. It is said to be a representation of the story in the Old Testament about the sea serpent, Leviathan in the book of Job.

Unity- Consistency with the droplets and how it is all tied together in the center.
Line- The lines in this piece help it create a more representative feel. For example, the structures in this piece are often referred to as resembling raindrops, tears, webs. The lines again, spawn from the center. Your eye naturally moves from that center and all fabric from the top is thin and your eye is drawn to the bottom which again leads to the center.
Space- The space in this helps create depth and interest. For example, if there were no holes in the center piece, all there would be is a white sheet and the eye wouldn’t be drawn as much.
Shape- The shapes in this piece are important because if, for example, the styrofoam wasn’t round of the fabric wasn’t thin then it would give it a completely different feel and may not tell the same story.

Asia Fuller Presents

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The Strange Case of Patricia Piccinini:

An Eccentric Genius

Patricia Piccinini is a Sierra Leone-born Australian sculptress who is well known for her hyper-realistic human-creature hybrids. They may come off as unsettling at first glance, but if you stop to look closely, the pieces almost tell a tender story. Piccinini made use of contrast by making something so terrifyingly ghastly into something so sweet and gentle. She’s done works outside of sculptures such as paintings, photography, drawings, videography, and other forms of media. Through all of the mediums that she has used, surrealism was an art style she has hardly ever strayed from.

In 1988, Piccinini attended the Australian National University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Economic History. She later attended the Victorian College of Arts in order to obtain her Bachelor of Arts for Painting in 1991. She eventually spent her early career studying human anatomy and found different ways to contort it into abnormal shapes and forms. Before she begins any project, she draws out her ideas and has a team help develop a three-dimensional test model. For her final product, the main materials that Piccinini would typically use are silicone, fiberglass, and human hair.

Piccinini, Patricia. The Carrier. 2012, silicone, human and animal hair, clothing. Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

In the image above, it shows an image of “The Carrier”, a naked bear-like human creature carrying a fully-dressed old woman in its hands. It’s interesting how something so large and powerful would seem to be subservient to someone so seemingly frail and harmless in comparison. There is a sense of an unequal balance where the old lady holds dominance and superiority over the bear man. It could be possible that this may be a mutual relationship between him and her where a task is being fulfilled.

Piccinini, Patricia. The Surrogate (For the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat). 2005, silicone, fiberglass, leather, plywood, human hair. The Art Gallery of South Australia.

This next piece, “The Surrogate” portrays a creature incubating a wisdom of baby wombats within the wombs down its backside. Each wombat slowly becomes pushed out of the pouch through the creature’s pores as it sits contently. The Surrogate made itself a safe space for the little joeys and would keep them protected from harm.

Patricia Piccinini.The Bond.2016, Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, clothing.Tolarno Galleries, Melbourn Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco.

“The Bond” shows a woman cradling an overly fleshy, piglike child fondly as if it were her own. It almost seems as if she is comforting him from as he sits comfortably in her embrace. Upon closer inspection, the creature looks reminiscent of the piece “Teenage Metamorphasis”. From there the creature is independent of the “mother” in this image and lies upon a blanket with a stereo and the book Metamorphasis by Franz Kafka.

Piccinini, Patricia. The Couple. 2018, Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, found objects. Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

“The Couple” portrays two humanoid creatures lying with one another alone in a trailer. This piece has left me staring at it longer than any of the others. These creatures look the most human compared to any other piece that I’ve seen yet it intrigues me the most. Their body language alone tells an entire story about their relationship. The male may feel a sense of vulnerability and comfort within his lover’s arms while the female would help bear the weight of demons and insecurities.

Piccinini, Patricia.The Welcome Guest. 2011, Silicone, Fiberglass, human hair, clothing, taxidermy peacock, bed. Tolnaro Gallery, Melbourne.

In ” The Welcome Guest”, a little girl is being greeted by a stranger ready to give her a hug on a bed with a peacock standing from the head of the bed. In my eyes, the idea behind a strange creature being friendly to children has always been adorable for me. It’s elongated nails and animalistic figure makes it slightly intimidating albeit its friendly face. Instead of being a child-hungry monster under the bed, the creature is a benign friend who’s willing there to be there with open arms.

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/patricia-piccinini-the-bond
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbournenow/artists/patricia-piccinini.html
https://www.art-almanac.com.au/patricia-piccinini-like-us/
https://theweekendedition.com.au/event-news/patricia-piccinini-curious-affection/ https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/patricia-piccinini https://www.designboom.com/art/the-carrier-an-animal-and-human-hybrid-by-patricia-piccinini/

Tracey Emin- Lauren McCarn

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Tracey Emin is a famous British artist who is well known for her deeply emotional art that explores her traumas, shame, sexuality, love, and her childhood. As her art mostly is comprised of short highly emotional glimpses into her experience of her experience as a woman, many critics describe her works as “autobiographical and confessional”. The reoccurring themes of her work helped her gain the title of the “Enfant Terrible of the Young British Artists movement”. She explores these themes in a variety of different mediums such as sculpture, drawings, paintings, and, sewn appliqués, and neon signs. Many of these different mediums are used to explore different ideas, such as her neon signs often address her thoughts on love, while her paintings and drawings are primarily focused on her vulnerability though sexuality.

In one of Emin’s arguably most well know works, titled “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995“, she lists from early childhood to the current year in which she had created the piece, everyone she had ever slept with, she included her family, her friends, and her sexual partners. She explained “Some I’d had a shag with in bed or against a wall some I had just slept with, like my grandma. I used to lay in her bed and hold her hand. We used to listen to the radio together and nod off to sleep. You don’t do that with someone you don’t love and don’t care about.” She used sewn appliqué pieces, that to some extent look almost childlike, possibly meaning to show that sleeping with someone used to mean something entirely different and innocent.

*Mum & Dad*
2017
Acrylic and pencil on canvas

*It was all too Much*
2018
Acrylic on canvas

In these selections from her exhibit, A Fortnight of Tears, Emin explores her pain from her traumatic childhood, rape, abortions, and lost love and other tragic themes of the female experience. For Emin, much of this exhibit was about addressing her shame, and conquering it, in an interview she stated “I’ve killed my shame, I’ve hung it on the walls.”

Her variety in mediums help the viewer to understand the different kinds of pain she felt from different experiences. In “Mum & Dad” and “It was all too Much” she uses line and color to show the mental damage of her childhood and sexual past. In both pieces we can see how Emin uses erratic brushstrokes to convey how the mental trauma has manifested in her life and how, but in “Mum & Dad” we also see one straight line in the center, that clearly represents the harsh division in her parents relationship. I believe she chose a similar medium for both of these paintings because she feels a similar type of primal pain, as opposed to the neon used in “longed for you” which seems to be more of a commentary on beautiful pain. In an interview she once said, “For me, aggression, sex and beauty go together. Much of my work has been about memory, for example, but memories of violence and pain. Nowadays if I make a drawing I’m trying to draw love, but love isn’t always gentle. Being an artist isn’t just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message.”