Liz Craft
02 Jun - 01 Jul 2006
LIZ CRAFT
Opening Thursday 1 June, 6 - 8 pm
“A macho female magical childe whose parents, siblings, babysitters, and alter egos smoke too much pot; a coolly uncool troller in the junkyards, souvenir shops, dens, and bedrooms of an ur-‘70s California of the mind; a savvy navigator of the lineage of hyperreal figurative sculpture that plays oedipal anxiety against consumerist ennui: The sensibility animating Liz Craft’s busy roomful of cast bronze objects was all of these.”
Frances Richard, ‘Liz Craft: Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York’, Artforum, April, 2004
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles based artist Liz Craft.
Liz Craft has many sources of inspiration, just one being the Californian cultural landscape; in the past she has referenced hippies, Hell’s Angels and psychedelia. She takes these inspirations and combines them with dreams, memories and formal considerations to produce surreal versions of everyday objects.
In a series of new sculptures, made primarily of cast and painted bronze, Liz Craft continues to take inspiration from an evident Californian vernacular, fusing mythical and fantastical imagery with everyday objects such as discarded furniture and knickknacks.
A bronze loveseat’s patterned surface is being transformed into a baroque surface; it’s many birds becoming three-dimensional. Elsewhere a bronze table is morphed with a bearded man and a miniature version of this man rides on his back or on the tabletop. A large ornate stained glass butterfly rests atop a tangle of car exhaust mufflers and in another bronze sculpture Liz Craft presents us with a collection of gathered cacti and curios.
Liz Craft’s heavily moulded sculptures have a haphazard air to them, as if they were borrowed from another time. They are reminiscent of the die-cast metal trinkets found in souvenir shops, yet blown up in scale to strange proportions; they are alternately humorous and sinister. In this new body of work Liz Craft combines nature and mediated culture, weaving in and out of narrative realism and fantasy, to create her own breed of beautiful mutant creatures and bizarre objects.
Liz Craft was born in Los Angeles (1970) and lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1997). Liz Craft has exhibited widely and groups show include: “Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1998); “Mise En Scene: New LA Sculpture”, Santa Monica Museum of Art (2000); “The Americans-New Art”, Barbican Gallery, London (2001); “It’s all an illusion”, Migros Museuem fur Gengenartskunst, Zurich (2004); and the Whitney Biennale, New York (2004). Solo exhibitions include Centrum fur Gegenwartskunst Oberosterreich, Linz, Austria (2001) and in June (2006) Liz Craft will have solo show at the Halle fuer Kunst e.V. Lueneburg, Germany. A major catalogue of the artist’s work will accompany the exhibition.
Opening Thursday 1 June, 6 - 8 pm
“A macho female magical childe whose parents, siblings, babysitters, and alter egos smoke too much pot; a coolly uncool troller in the junkyards, souvenir shops, dens, and bedrooms of an ur-‘70s California of the mind; a savvy navigator of the lineage of hyperreal figurative sculpture that plays oedipal anxiety against consumerist ennui: The sensibility animating Liz Craft’s busy roomful of cast bronze objects was all of these.”
Frances Richard, ‘Liz Craft: Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York’, Artforum, April, 2004
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles based artist Liz Craft.
Liz Craft has many sources of inspiration, just one being the Californian cultural landscape; in the past she has referenced hippies, Hell’s Angels and psychedelia. She takes these inspirations and combines them with dreams, memories and formal considerations to produce surreal versions of everyday objects.
In a series of new sculptures, made primarily of cast and painted bronze, Liz Craft continues to take inspiration from an evident Californian vernacular, fusing mythical and fantastical imagery with everyday objects such as discarded furniture and knickknacks.
A bronze loveseat’s patterned surface is being transformed into a baroque surface; it’s many birds becoming three-dimensional. Elsewhere a bronze table is morphed with a bearded man and a miniature version of this man rides on his back or on the tabletop. A large ornate stained glass butterfly rests atop a tangle of car exhaust mufflers and in another bronze sculpture Liz Craft presents us with a collection of gathered cacti and curios.
Liz Craft’s heavily moulded sculptures have a haphazard air to them, as if they were borrowed from another time. They are reminiscent of the die-cast metal trinkets found in souvenir shops, yet blown up in scale to strange proportions; they are alternately humorous and sinister. In this new body of work Liz Craft combines nature and mediated culture, weaving in and out of narrative realism and fantasy, to create her own breed of beautiful mutant creatures and bizarre objects.
Liz Craft was born in Los Angeles (1970) and lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1997). Liz Craft has exhibited widely and groups show include: “Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1998); “Mise En Scene: New LA Sculpture”, Santa Monica Museum of Art (2000); “The Americans-New Art”, Barbican Gallery, London (2001); “It’s all an illusion”, Migros Museuem fur Gengenartskunst, Zurich (2004); and the Whitney Biennale, New York (2004). Solo exhibitions include Centrum fur Gegenwartskunst Oberosterreich, Linz, Austria (2001) and in June (2006) Liz Craft will have solo show at the Halle fuer Kunst e.V. Lueneburg, Germany. A major catalogue of the artist’s work will accompany the exhibition.