If the Addams' family's Thing multiplied and mutated, it would resemble something like Alessandro Boezio's sculptures. The artist works in clay and fiber glass to create creepy-crawly anatomical forms that remix the human body. Boezio is particularly fascinated with hands and feet, often mingling digits and limbs in unholy ways. Though there's nothing particularly explicit about his work, seeing severed hands standing up by themselves without a body attached is enough to make our skin crawl.
If the Addams’ family’s Thing multiplied and mutated, it would resemble something like Alessandro Boezio’s sculptures. The artist works in clay and fiber glass to create creepy-crawly anatomical forms that remix the human body. Boezio is particularly fascinated with hands and feet, often mingling digits and limbs in unholy ways. Though there’s nothing particularly explicit about his work, seeing severed hands standing up by themselves without a body attached is enough to make our skin crawl.
Opening on May 2, “Degeneration/Regeneration" features the paintings of Scott Greenwalt and the 3D-printed sculptures of the collaborative team of Smith|Allen (Stephanie Smith and Bryan Allen) at Oakland’s Loakal Art Gallery. It shows how artists mediate nature through art. It’s not a new concept, not by a long shot. But it’s a fertile and relevant one. On one level, the show serves as an environmental call to arms. Any recent image of industrial Chinese cities affirms the show’s significance. On another level, it shows the way that urban folk experience digital representations of the natural world. This digitization can take place with photos and videos posted on social media. Google Earth allows viewers can visit scenes of natural or otherwise exotic climes. Finally, video games often occur in hyper accurate landscapes.
Japanese artist Tomohiro Inaba creates sculptures that appear to disintegrate into the air. His steel wire animals and human figures appear as apparitions in the galleries they inhabit across the world. For Inaba, the imagined space created by his works are a vital component.
Hugh Hayden shapes wood, sourced from Christmas trees, exotic timbers, or other unexpected objects, into cerebral recreations of everyday objects. He recently showed recent work at C L E A R I N G’s Brussels gallery, pulling from spiritual, historical, and other aspects of the city to craft the body of work shown. The artist often injects his own personal history into his work, whether in the subject depicted or in the very wood harvested and formed.
Baltimore, Maryland based artist Brad Blair designs imaginative sculptural monstrosities that combine features of real world animals with those from our dreams and nightmares. His works are an elaborate mixture of media, made of primarily clay and ceramic, natural parts like fox tails and fish fins, rubber cast tongues, and mechanical elements like watches and monofilament, giving them a certain science-fiction or cyborg quality.
