grotesque

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Art

Louise Zhang’s Abstract Vials Filled With Playfully Grotesque Neon Blobs

Louise Zhang's Slosh Samples look like floating paintings, three-dimensional depictions of 2D abstract work. The bottles contain brightly colored fluids that separate and congeal, containing everything from polymer clay to flubber. At first one is delighted by the bubblegum colors that fill the vessels, yet after a quick inspection the grotesque nature of what lurks inside is easily revealed.

Both Zhang’s sculptures and paintings happily represent blob-like forms and revolting textures. The work seems excited to repel its audience after it has seduced them with its saturated neon hues, a palette that could be described as cute or playful. Zhang’s website compares her playful works to childhood cartoons like Spongebob Squarepants or Ren and Stimpy—television shows that invite our minds to interact with slime, slop, and snot.

Zhang is a Sydney-based artist currently working on her MFA at UNSW Art & Design and partaking in a residency with Throwdown Press. The artist’s first solo exhibition Plomp was held at Artereal Gallery in 2014. Zhang has described her work as “evocative of confectionery—the gooey, the sticky, and the sensation of sweets melting,” which brings to mind the sweet and sugary installations of Pip & Pop.