Monday, December 5, 2016

Alma Allen at Shane Campbell


(link)

Smooth muscle occurs mostly in the gut, uterus, walls of blood vessels, bladder, sphincter, etc.- the body's transit tubes - and these sculptures look like the things those organs produce: turds, early fetuses, blood cells, kidney stones. Shapes assembled resemble a basset hound, the artist's sculptures, partially digested. There is analogy to be made: exchanging the smooth muscle tube for linear time and the sculptor for an intestinal tract. Freed from the striations of skeletal muscle that once predicated historical sculpture, the smooth muscle sculptor turns to the open touch of just rubbing, frottage with the inanimate until the rocks are tumbled to our gratification. The basset hound even looks like a partially digested dog.


See too: Nicolas Deshayes at Modern Art