Month: July 2015

Roger Gremo

Roger Gremo, “Surgery of Desire”, Metal- Wood- Cloth

“The bodies Roger Gremo builds out of nothing are the reflection of a measured thought on sexual and pathological behaviours, and their definitions and perceptions within society. The anatomic materiality of these human-scale sculptures more broadly questions our individual tolerance regarding various conceptions and uses of the body, but also our collective relationship to sexual identity understood as a social construction.

The connotative as well as practical implications of the materials used are in keeping with this desire to address the problematic of the functional / dysfunctional body. Starting with a skeleton comprised of metal and wood pieces the artist gradually composes various human body parts by using miscellaneous objects, such as secondhand sports clothes and accessories, prostheses and underwear, to name but the most common.

Proceeding like a surgeon, Gremo sews the body parts around the skeleton-up to 10,000 hand-sewn stitches-and thus produces jointed body parts, which are sometimes incomplete, and often very supple, as the flexibility of some of the figures makes evident. However, the postures at times recall forced or at least difficult positions, evoking the situation of a victim under pressure. The repression of the body, in any form, thus also becomes a central issue.” – Aseman Sabet

Aggie Zed

Aggie Zed, Untitled, (Elephant with Wings)

A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Aggie Zed grew up in a large family on Sullivan’s Island riding ponies and donkeys on the beach. As a child she watched her father repair television sets and played for hours with cheap plastic horses and cowboys which had no moving parts.

Living in Richmond, Virginia, after graduating from The University of South Carolina with a degree in Fine Arts, Zed supported her painting by designing and building ceramic chess sets. Her work in clay evolved to become a widely-collected series of human-animal hybrid figures with which she has made a living.

Aggie Zed’s sculpture ranges from intimately-scaled ceramic figures of people and human-animal hybrids to copper wire and ceramic horses to ceramic and mixed-metals contrivances she calls “scrap floats”. Her scrap floats are intended as entries in a parade of the future.​

Green Tree Python

Green Tree Python: Native to New Guinea, Islands in Indonesia, and Cape York Peninsula in Australia

The Green Tree Python is characterized by a relatively slim body. The relatively long tail accounts for about 14% of the total length. The head is large and clearly defined from the neck. The snout is large and angular. The body is triangular in cross section with a visible spine. The species usually reaches a total length of 150-180 cm (4.9-5.9 ft), but large females may reach 200 cm (6.6 ft). The size also varies depending on the region of origin.

Toto was Lost from Sight

Photographer Unknown, (Toto Was Lost from Sight)

“She was awakened by a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened; and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving; nor was it dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room. She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ran and opened the door.”

― L. Frank Baum,The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

David Kirk: “Child of Vengeance”

 

Photographer Unknown, (Child of Vengeance)

“Intorno a lui, le tranquille risaie riflettevano le stelle come lastre di ossidiana, e lui smaniava dalla voglia di sfoderare la spada e squarciarle; tagliare le stelle e tagliare il cielo e l’universo, solo perché sapeva che era in grado di farlo.”

“Around him, the quiet rice fields reflected the stars as slabs of obsidian, and he was anxious from the desire to draw the sword and squarciarle; cut the stars and cut the sky and the universe, just because he knew he could do it. ”

-David Kirk, Child of Vengeance

Jason Hess

Jason Hess, Ceramics

Ceramic artist Jason Hess uses a variety of clay materials, firing his pieces, generally unglazed, in a wood burning kiln. His work is either utilitarian or refers to utility in form. In his more sculptural work, he seeks to group pieces that evoke characters relating to one another.

Jason holds an MFA in ceramics from Utah State University and is currently a professor of art at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. His ceramic art has been featured in many exhibitions nationally and internationally. The artist has participated in residencies at Montana’s Archie Bray Foundation and at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China.

Henrique Oliveira

Henrique Oliveira, “Baitogogo”, Reclaimed Tapumes, 2013, Palais de Tokyo Museum, Paris, France

Designed by Henrique Oliveira to look like an impossibly tangled Gordian Knot, the Baitogogo sculpture was installed within an exhibition space at Palais de Tokyo as a mass of tree-like plywood branches.

The exhibition curators said “ Creating a spectacular and invasive Gordian Knot, Henrique Oliveira plays with Palais de Tokyo’s architecture, allowing a  work that combines the vegetal and the organic.”

The large installation was created from reclaimed tapumes – a plywood material traditionally used in Brazilian towns to construct the hoardings around construction sites. Oliveria collected the discarded tapumes from the streets of São Paulo, where he both lives and works. The veneer-like strips were bent into shape and nailed together to form the installation’s branches. Further wooden veneers were fixed to the structure to give it a bark-like texture and appearance.