Venice Biennale | Monumental outdoor marble cloud sculpture | Nocturne dress sculptures
Cumulus, a monumental marble sculpture of a cloud, and an installation of Nocturnes are part of Glasstress 2017 during the Venice Biennale.
Cumulus is based on work I did modeling weather with climatologists at CalTech. It is a meditation on the contradictions of weight and weightlessness, material and immateriality, presence and absence. Clouds are elusive – they have no edge and no fixed form – yet this carved marble piece is an exact representation of an actual cumulus cloud.
The Nocturnes installation is on the piano nobile of Palazzo Franchetti — just meters away from where Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, the first reclining female nude, heralded the beginning of modern art. The echo of his Venus resonates in the absent figures of the sculptures, which connect its beauty to the infinite and aqueous depth of night, imbuing an established genre with contemporary relevance. My figures refer directly to this long tradition of depicting the female form, and the tension between humanism and eroticism, the physical and the ethereal, the body and the spirit.
Read MoreCumulus is based on work I did modeling weather with climatologists at CalTech. It is a meditation on the contradictions of weight and weightlessness, material and immateriality, presence and absence. Clouds are elusive – they have no edge and no fixed form – yet this carved marble piece is an exact representation of an actual cumulus cloud.
The Nocturnes installation is on the piano nobile of Palazzo Franchetti — just meters away from where Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, the first reclining female nude, heralded the beginning of modern art. The echo of his Venus resonates in the absent figures of the sculptures, which connect its beauty to the infinite and aqueous depth of night, imbuing an established genre with contemporary relevance. My figures refer directly to this long tradition of depicting the female form, and the tension between humanism and eroticism, the physical and the ethereal, the body and the spirit.
