"In her Floating World series, Karen LaMonte elaborates upon the notion of a “social skin” by incorporating the cultural specificity of Japan and the material connotations of glass, ceramic, bronze, and rusted iron. The project offered LaMonte the opportunity to work the complex system of signification embedded in the archetypal garment of Japan: the kimono...
IRON
BRONZE
CERAMIC
GLASS
...Each material—ceramic, bronze, iron, glass—records the details of the fabrics differently. LaMonte’s repetitions of the same posture or gesture in various mediums are an insightful melding of material and content, form and iconography. The nuances of meaning that haunt glass, ceramic, bronze, and iron provide an interpretive lens through which we may better understand LaMonte’s cultural and aesthetic explorations of the kimono."
- Laura Addison
(im)materiality
LaMonte’s exploration of different materials—glass, ceramic, bronze, and rusted iron—endows each subject with different degrees of presence.
Regardless of her chosen medium, LaMonte enacts a transformative process that involves a cast and formation by fire. Casting itself is a process that uses a negative to create a positive. Hence, it is a process whereby there is a loss of the “original” physical presence.
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