Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Revisiting Michele Oka Doner’s Partial, Absorbing Figurative Sculptures

Michele Oka Doner's long career has produced bold sculpture, works on paper, and public art that engrosses in both its appreciation of the natural world and innovation. Her figurative works, in specific, use partially formed and seemingly organic parts to inspire awe. Many named for gods and goddesses, these particular works feel at once godly and incomplete or reflections of our limitations.

Michele Oka Doner‘s long career has produced bold sculpture, works on paper, and public art that engrosses in both its appreciation of the natural world and innovation. Her figurative works, in specific, use partially formed and seemingly organic parts to inspire awe. Many named for gods and goddesses, these particular works feel at once godly and incomplete or reflections of our limitations.

“The breadth of her artistic production encompasses sculpture, design objects, furniture, jewelry, public art and video installations,” a statement offers. “Michele Oka Doner’s work is fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world, from which she derives her formal vocabulary. Her work encompasses materials including glass, bronze and silver and in a variety of scales she mirrors the world around her – from the small and intimate to the large and magnificent.”

This works arrive on this side of her career, which has spanned differing meditations and eras on similar concepts. The artist’s work is part of collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and several others. Her most recent book is titled “Mysterium”, released just last year.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Casey Curran's kinetic sculptures consist of wire, aluminum, motors, sculpted brass, cranks, or other materials, yet resemble organic objects in essence. The artist, hailing from Washington, crafts his intricate works with the cycles and shapes of nature in mind, yet each sculpture doesn’t seem to draw from any one creature or floral element.
Little is known about Japanese artist trio three. The young, anonymous artist collective utilizes toys and other childhood ephemera to create provocative installations and sculptures. Action figures and rubber figurines are melted into fleshy masses. The artists create complex, geometric forms out of the liquified toys, forming them into patters that alternate distinguishable characters' faces and anonymous, tan blobs where limbs and bodies used to be. Micro elements accumulate into overwhelming conglomerations that challenge the viewer's eye to distinguish their many details.
Eagles, butterflies, beetles, skulls and human hearts are just a few of the things that British artist Phil Robson, aka "Filfury" has shaped using sneaker parts. The self-described 90s child defines his work as a "a battle of pop culture vs nature", turning his obsession with sneakers, hip hop culture, and our own over-consumption of mass products into an unlikely source material.
Vienna, Austria based artist Martin C. Herbst embraces distortion in his paintings, spanning from flat, wavy, and convex surfaces to the rounded shapes of stainless steel spheres. In his ongoing series on folded aluminum, Herbst presents classical portraiture in a new and unconventional way. This body of work is in part inspired by Mannerism, specifically the work of Mannerist painter Parmigianino, whose style emphasized elongated proportions and highly stylized poses with no clear perspective.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List