sculpture

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Art

Entangled Figures Grasp a Small Footbridge Above a Philadelphia Street in Miguel Horn's New Installation

Clinging to a concrete footbridge in Philadelphia are two groups of figures in tangled clusters. The striking installation is attached to a 20-foot walkway arched over 1200 Cuthbert Street in City Center and is the latest work of artist Miguel Horn, who is known for his fragmented sculptures and large-scale installations comprised of CNC-cut plates. Each of the forms in “ContraFuerte” features topographic layers constructed with thousands of stacked aluminum pieces—Horn shares much of his process from initial sketches to clay prototypes on Instagram—which fuse together to create figures that appear in the midst of struggle. Similar to the artist’s previous works that directly respond to their location, the oversized piece is designed to “grapple with the task to sustain, or raise up a bridge that spans the width of the street,” Horn says. (via Streets Dept)

 

Craft

Creatures Fly and Swim through Lush Ecosystems in Kinetic Miniatures by Penny Thomson

Fish writhing through the ocean, colorful butterflies taking flight, and owls leaving their perch are a few of the creatures featured in Penny Thomson’s miniature ecosystems. The Sheffield-born artist deftly captures marine and land animals’ movement in her kinetic sculptures that operate with simple hand-cranks. Coated in moss, sprawling branches, and other foliage, the whimsical works are tiny renditions of their real-life counterparts. Thomson offers the lively creations on Etsy, but they sell out quickly so watch for shop announcements on her Instagram to snag one.

 

Art Craft

Wrinkled Drapery and Speckled Orbs Disguise the Figures of Jessica Calderwood's Peculiar Sculptures

Indiana-based artist Jessica Calderwood imbues her whimsically camouflaged figures with questions about the female psyche. Whether covered by a polka-dotted orb or stuck in a ruffled tube of fabric, her nondescript women are temporarily trapped by their environments, their only defining features the sleek black pumps or striped kneesocks that stick out from their disguise. This concealment, Calderwood says, serves as “a negation, a censoring or denial of what lies beneath. These anthropomorphic beings are at once, powerful and powerless, beautiful and absurd, inflated, and amputated.”

Deftly melding historical techniques with contemporary themes of identity, each of the works is rooted in traditional craftsmanship. A focus on mixed media is at the center of Calderwood’s broad body of work, which spans metalsmithing, jewelry, and wall-based ceramics, and many of her projects blend materials like enamel, porcelain, polymer clay, and felted wool to further evoke craft forms.

Many of the pieces shown here are all on view at Asheville’s Momentum Gallery through September 7, and you can find more of Calderwood’s peculiar sculptures on her site and Instagram.

 

Art Design Food Illustration

Lifelike Sculptures by Diana Beltrán Herrera Recreate Flora and Fauna in Intricately Cut Paper

Colombian artist Diana Beltrán Herrera (previously) adds to her growing collection of intricate paper sculptures with new plant and animal life. From her studio in Bristol, the artist and designer recreates lifelike reproductions of turacos, monarchs, and various species with nearly perfect precision. Innumerable fringed strips become feathers, faint scores mimic delicate creases in petals, and layers of bright paper form brilliantly colored plumes, creating a colorful and diverse ecosystem of wildlife from around the world.

Prints, jigsaw puzzles, and cards are available in Beltrán Herrera’s shop, and you can see more of her recent commissions and personal projects on Behance and Instagram.

 

Art Documentary Music

Through Totemic Sculptures and Sound Art, Guadalupe Maravilla Explores the Therapeutic Power of Indigenous Ritual

In 1984, eight-year-old Guadalupe Maravilla left his family and joined a group of other children fleeing their homes in El Salvador. The Central American country was in the midst of a brutal civil war, a profoundly traumatic experience that’s left an indelible impact on the artist and one that guides his broad, multi-disciplinary practice to this day.

Now based in Brooklyn, Maravilla works across painting, sculpture, and sound-based performances all veiled with autobiography, whether informed by the Mayan architecture and stone totems that surrounded him as a child or his cancer diagnosis as a young adult. His pieces are predominately therapeutic and rooted in Indigenous ritual and mythology, recurring themes the team at Art21 explores in a new documentary.

 

“Guadalupe Maravilla & the Sound of Healing” follows the artist as he prepares for his solo exhibition on view through September 6 at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. Titled Planeta Abuelx, or Grandparent Planet—Maravilla expands on the often-used idea of Mother Nature to broaden its scope—the outdoor show is comprised of the artist’s trademark Disease Throwers, towering headdresses and shrines made of recycled aluminum. Allusions to Central American culture bolster the monumental works, with imprints of corn cobs, wooden toys, and other found objects planted throughout.

Covering the surrounding grass are chalky white markings, a signature component of the artist’s practice that delineate every space where he installs a piece. The abstract patterns evoke Tripa Chuca, one of Maravilla’s favorite childhood games that involves players drawing lines between corresponding numbers to create new intertwined motifs.

 

In Planeta Abuelx, Maravilla pairs his visual works with meditative performances that are based on the sound baths he used for pain management while undergoing chemotherapy. These healing therapies are designed to reduce anxiety and tension that often trigger stress-induced diseases. Using gongs and glass vessels, the palliative remedy has been the foundation of workshops the artist hosts for undocumented immigrants and others dealing with cancer that more deeply connect his totemic artworks to the viewers.

“Having a community that has gone through similar experiences can be really empowering,” he says. “Making these elaborate Disease Throwers is not just about telling a story from my past, but it’s also about how this healing ritual can continue in the future, long after I’m gone.”

If you’re in New York, Maravilla is hosting a sound bath to mark the close of Planeta Abuelx on September 4, and you can see more of his multivalent projects on Instagram. For a larger archive of documentaries exploring the lives and work of today’s most impactful artists, like this visit to Wangechi Mutu’s Nairobi studio, check out Art21’s site.

 

Art

A Collection of Wax Sculptures by Artist Urs Fischer Is Burning in the Bourse de Commerce in Paris

A diverse collection of life-size candles occupies the renovated rotunda of Bourse de Commerce in Paris, where it will spend the fall and winter slowly melting into pools of wax. The realistic sculptures are part of Untitled (2011), a redesigned installation by Swiss artist Urs Fischer (previously)—see some of the original works on Artsy—and were lit on the first day of the exhibition. Now partially melted, the ephemeral works are a “monument to impermanence, transformation, the passage of time, metamorphosis, and creative destruction,” a statement says.

At the center of the installation is an exacting replica of Giambologna’s marble “The Abduction of the Sabine Women” (1579-1582), with an effigy of Fischer’s friend and fellow artist Rudolf Stingel nearby. The figurative works are surrounded by seven chairs, four of which are modeled after seats from Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia that are part of the collection at Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac. Paired with an airline bench, rolling office chair, and mass-produced garden seat, the eclectic array speaks to the ongoing effects of colonization and globalization.

Untitled (2011) will burn daily through December 31, 2021, or until the wicks disintegrate. (via Ignant)