Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

The Recent Underwater Sculptures of Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor has spent more than a decade crafting underwater sculptures that create living reefs, improving the surrounding ecosystem at a time when 40 percent of coral reefs have disappeared over the past decades. His recent pieces including 48 life-sized figures in Indonesian waters and a recently installed an initial phase of his underwater art museum, The Coralarium. Taylor last appeared on HiFructose.com here.

Jason deCaires Taylor has spent more than a decade crafting underwater sculptures that create living reefs, improving the surrounding ecosystem at a time when 40 percent of coral reefs have disappeared over the past decades. His recent pieces including 48 life-sized figures in Indonesian waters and a recently installed an initial phase of his underwater art museum, The Coralarium. Taylor last appeared on HiFructose.com here.

During the past couple years, the sculptor’s work has been attached to controversy, for how similar Damien Hirst’s recent work appears to Taylor’s. Hirst was accused of lifting Taylor’s aesthetic. “After viewing Hirst’s latest exhibition it seems I have certainly created an art genre that has been responded to, but his marine facsimiles are very different in context from my living installations,” Taylor said at the time. “If people really want to see ‘unbelievable treasures’ they should look below the surface of our seas at the real live wonders of the blue world—nature does not lie.”

See more of Taylor’s work below.


Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Erika Sanada's canine sculptures are both endearing and unnerving. There's something sweet about her ceramic puppies (featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 31) despite their zombie eyes and pale, hairless skin. The dogs play, wrestle, and cuddle, but the ambiguous details in each sculpture make it possible to interpret their gestures as either tender or malicious, or perhaps a bit of both. Sanada began creating these creatures as a way of coping with anxiety. She says they represent dark elements of her mind she's had to tame. The latest installment of her ongoing, autobiographical body of work will debut in her upcoming solo show, "Odd Things: Daydreaming," which opens November 28 at Antler Gallery in Portland and runs through December 31.
First featured in HF Vol 34, artist Click Mort takes vintage ceramic figurines and "recapitates" them into whimsical characters spawned from his imagination. In his latest series on view at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, the artist takes influences from his own dreams and nightmares. His exhibition "Delirium Tremens" is named after a psychotic condition typical of withdrawal in chronic alcoholics, which often involves hallucinations. Considering this, while his works are infused with nostalgia and humor, one cannot ignore a certain melancholy in them.
Japanese artist Takako Yuki’s fantastical ceramic art evokes both feelings of whimsy and uneasiness, with beings that seem birthed from fairytales and the natural world. These often-child-friendly creations contain flourishes of sadness and strangeness. The artist says that there are several emotions at play in the process of forging these works.
Isaac Cordal brings new sculptures to C.O.A. Galerie in Montreal with "Ego Monuments," his distinctive everyman showing the solitude of contemporary living. Alongside his balding figures is a depicting of the U.S.'s embattled leader in "Game of Thrones" and human-faced livestock grazing an urban puddle. The show runs through Oct. 12. (Cordal was last featured on our site here.)

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List