Cal Lane
16 Oil Can Map of the World #2
2011

Name: 16 Oil Can Map of the World #2
Brand: Cal Lane
Price: 22000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Cal Lane remembers her grandmother making cupcakes, then covering them with paper doilies and sifting icing sugar on their tops to create a decorative lace pattern. It is an accessible memory from her childhood that is revealing of the cultural inheritance she brings to her practice. In Lane’s series Powdered Tires, large car tires stand upright in the gallery that have been dusted with powdered sugar in latticed designs. The gentle impermanence and frivolity of the sugar seems to oppose the firm practicality and mobility of the tires, suggesting both utilitarian and domestic productions, and stereotypically masculine and feminine roles. Lane not only trained as an artist but also as a welder, and cultivated her skills for fabricating functional objects as an artistic technique. Contrasts are integral to Lane’s tactile 2- and 3-dimensional sculptures. There are elements of hard and soft, strong and delicate, masculine and feminine, art and craft, inside and outside, ancient and contemporary in her pieces. In Sweet Crude, Lane takes industrial objects, including oil cans, and incises them with ornate patterns. These cans are endowed with a completely new, aestheticized purpose. They manage to retain a sense of their former lives since they are identifiable for what they once were. The cans’ familiarity as functional objects and their uniqueness as an artistic medium make them accessible to a wide range of viewers. The cuttings depict power struggles between coupling mythological beings, urban street scenes and animal-studded landscapes, to name a few scenarios. Whole worlds are mapped out and carved from the metal surfaces of these cans. Splayed into cross-shapes, it is easy to discern continents and bodies of water in the tableaux. Up close, there are striking forms and details nestled in the red or black filigree: a pickup truck, a gunman, a maiden in profile.* These silhouetted people and objects reveal as much as they conceal, and they do not amount to a cohesive whole. Consider the exhibition’s title: The term “sweet crude” refers to the most sought-after form of petroleum. It is a vast understatement to say this is a resource that nations have fought to gain and to protect. In examining the power struggles of war or sex, a straightforward narrative is impossible. Clear allegorical expectations will not be met in the tangled tales Lane weaves. And the raw beauty of the objects confuses the complicated issues to which they are alluding. * The work that I am directly referring to is Oil Drum Map of the World #1, 2008, 70.5 x 79 inches, plasma-cut steel oil drum.

Creator:

Cal Lane (1968 -, Canadian)

Creation Year:

2011

Dimensions:

Height: 43.71 in (111 cm)Width: 81.5 in (207 cm)Depth: 1.97 in (5 cm)

Medium:

Metal

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

21st Century

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Montreal, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU476123458

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Shop All Cal Lane

Cal Lane

Sculptor and metal artist Cal Lane has garnered international acclaim for transforming industrial steel I-beams, shovels, car hoods and dumpsters into lacy, decorative works of art. While her sculptures can be interpreted as a challenge to gender stereotypes — the transformation of hard, “masculine” steel into “feminine” lace filigree — Lane suggests her art reaches beyond that.

“I see steel as a metaphor for confrontation, a thing that represents the walls put up by the society I was born into,” she has said. “Steel feels like the perfect material to carve into, to create the contrasts and conflicts that I myself struggle with.”

Born in 1968 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Lane trained as a welder and was a hairdresser in her mother’s salon on Vancouver Island before she turned to build a career in art. She earned her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and attended the State University of New York, where she specialized in sculpture and earned her MFA.

As an artist, Lane became interested in exploring gender roles through Conceptual art. Although critics have compared her work to that of American minimalist sculptor Richard Serra, known for his spiral steel sculptures, Lane cuts into steel objects, creating ornate patterns that reference femininity in her figurative and abstract sculptures. This is demonstrated in works such as Pantie (2017), Veiled Hood #2 (2014) and Grace Invasion (2011).

In addition to her sculptures, Lane produced a series of wallpaper drawings in 2017, such as True Barring, Mind Your Bubble and Poking Holes in the Ocean, depicting military submarines on cloud patterns. The drawings explore the perception of submarines as phallic war objects in contrast to their innocent depictions in popular culture.

Lane’s sculptures and illustrations have been exhibited in numerous international shows throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. Her works are also highly sought by collectors of Contemporary and abstract art.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of original Cal Lane sculptures, prints and drawings.