Nature More
9/15/2006 – 10/27/2006
3rd Ward, Brooklyn
Artists: James T. Greco, Jerelyn Hanrahan, Nick Lascot, Julie Mann, Rune Olsen and Emily Silver.
Curated by Peter Dudek.
In Nature More sculptural representations of living creatures and the natural world abound, yet natural materials are nowhere to be found. This is a gathering of objects made from “social materials” —commercially available, man-made or man-altered. Masterfully coaxed into empathetic forms, mundane materials such as tape and cardboard express a primal presence, imbued with sex, mortality, and the sublime. In this show, the carnal asserts itself, always lush and present.
Jerelyn Hanrahan’s work often integrates sculpture, installation and technology. In her cast heads, innate animalistic augmentations seem to seismically force their way to the surface bringing along with them the attendant psychological disruptions.
Nick Lascot references symbols and imagery from memory, dreams, literature, mythology and personal experience. He creates characters that are at once models of Sisyphean impotence and storehouses of heroically grand potential.
Working in various materials and styles, James T. Greco has recently focused on making artifacts that function as vectors of power, wealth, class, politics, and sex in a world where many human beings cannot reconcile their fear of death with the knowledge that it is only by death that their lives hold any meaning.
Julie Mann is known for reworking the boney remains of animal carcasses into hybrid fossils. This extreme taxidermist has recently, in a more pastoral state of mind, produced a bleakly erotic yet glittering evocation of the natural world as plants rooted and rootless grope their way through a dim subterranean rhizome.
Through his animal characters, Rune Olsen explores the physical expression of attraction, instinct, and desire. Fucking Lions conveys the wild and intense feeling of orgasm; the pleasure of a "quickie" is present in Screwing Squirrels; and the somewhat rough play between lovers in dominates Take My Breath Away.
Emily Silver works with found, sought after and scavenged materials that she fashions into a familial mixture of discordant and ragged creatures. Trophies of sorts, these prized, not quite mortal beings, haggard and worn, are displayed in their raw and awkward predicament.