Liz Craft
17 Nov - 22 Dec 2007
LIZ CRAFT
Working in aluminum, Craft has created five large-scale monumental cubes that bear wall friezes, reliefs, cut outs and outsized protruding limbs. For this show, Craft takes on the reverential and sculpture's potential to be monumental, with large-scale and architectonic sculptures as her inspiration. While these new works are on one level clean minimalist boxes, Craft also continues to mine her particular iconography which draws from hippie, biker, and New Age-y California countercultures. Within each cube and frieze are interiors containing grotto-like inner lives. Using cast commonplace window frames in case, the openings allow the viewer to see the tableaus within. Each interior feels like aggrandized fragments of personal experiences, culled from both quotidian life and dreamlike memory. One contains a cave of stalactites, others are populated with Godzilla, palm trees, cushions, blooming vases, mermaid-like and floating figures. All are finished in a pristine white patina. The arm-like forms that extend from the sculptures feel almost Grecian in their design, yet also infuse the objects with an anthropomorphic strangeness.
Typical of Craft's work, the material solidity of the sculptures marks a contrast with the fanciful irreverence of the depicted figures and forms. Though the sculptures attain a new dimension in scale, they manage to retain a quaintness redolent of Craft's previous works as the artist's handicraft combines with refined craftsmanship.
Working in aluminum, Craft has created five large-scale monumental cubes that bear wall friezes, reliefs, cut outs and outsized protruding limbs. For this show, Craft takes on the reverential and sculpture's potential to be monumental, with large-scale and architectonic sculptures as her inspiration. While these new works are on one level clean minimalist boxes, Craft also continues to mine her particular iconography which draws from hippie, biker, and New Age-y California countercultures. Within each cube and frieze are interiors containing grotto-like inner lives. Using cast commonplace window frames in case, the openings allow the viewer to see the tableaus within. Each interior feels like aggrandized fragments of personal experiences, culled from both quotidian life and dreamlike memory. One contains a cave of stalactites, others are populated with Godzilla, palm trees, cushions, blooming vases, mermaid-like and floating figures. All are finished in a pristine white patina. The arm-like forms that extend from the sculptures feel almost Grecian in their design, yet also infuse the objects with an anthropomorphic strangeness.
Typical of Craft's work, the material solidity of the sculptures marks a contrast with the fanciful irreverence of the depicted figures and forms. Though the sculptures attain a new dimension in scale, they manage to retain a quaintness redolent of Craft's previous works as the artist's handicraft combines with refined craftsmanship.