Jennifer Small

The Bloom is Off the Rose

2014

For Nicolas Bourriaud, the flea market is a place where “past production is recycled and switches direction” and where “an object is given a new idea.” On the stalls of the flea market, objects are resurrected and given a second life. This is where Jennifer Small...

Text by Terence Sharpe There is a moment in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) when the character Hari commits suicide by drinking liquid oxygen. As she is not actually a human, but an artificial hybrid product of the mysterious planet and the protagonists’ memories, she heals rapidly and is alive again minutes later. Her choice to take her own life is poignant, seemingly the action of a being becoming aware of its hopeless infinitude. Her realization that while the men will die on the space station or elsewhere, her existence is that of immortality, a deeply alienating notion that causes her to seek her own destruction. The Montreal artist Guillaume Lachapelle has one work that prompts a sense of eternal alienation that echoes Hari’s tragedy. The work greets the viewer with a empty doorway flanked by clinically white bookshelves...

In the discourse of contemporary art, the migrant occupies a liminal position only available in theory. Existing within the in-between space of Nation and State, culture and uncultur...

In his recent works sculptor Nicholas Crombach uses the markers of tradition to critique social rituals. Through the employment of the mythology and the rich visual culture of the hunt, Crombach assembles works which revel in contradiction. He has created a series of unexpected juxtapositions that examine the cultural significance and the complex issues percolating around hunting and sporting traditions in the 21st century. For this exhibition, Crombach riffs off the myth of Diana and Actaeon, which provides a poignant framework for his theme. In the original story, Actaeon, the hunter and grandson of King Cadmus, is in the forest with his dogs, when he spies Artemis (Diana) in her bath attended by her nymphs. Diana was the goddess of the hunt, but when the mortal Actaeon sees her, her nymphs try to cover her modesty. She splashes him with water, turning him from a mortal man into a stag, who flees into the forest only to be hunted down and killed by his own dogs. The hunter becomes the hunted. Crombach’s Fetch (2018) refers to the mythology of Diana and Actaeon as he transforms the lofty and classical story of metamorphoses into a game of fetch in the local park, constructed on a grand scale. In Fetch (2018), Crombach creates a hybrid between the art historical imagery from paintings of hounds hunting stags with the flashy colours and synthetic materials of modern day dog chew toys. The sculpture is displayed alongside a variety of chew toys that act as an index for the sculptures interpretation, some transformed into porcelain that has been marked with the aristocratic hunting motifs found on antique English pottery. Here, the assembly of works create a conversation on the blurred boundaries between: histories of domestication, the working relationships we have with animals, contemporary issues of hunting as “play”, tradition and survival. A second major new sculpture “End of the Chase” is a collapsed version of a Victorian period rocking horse housed in London’s V&A Museum Of Childhood. The sculpture responds to the 2014 hunting act that passed in Britain which in turn attempts to obliterate the tradition of hunting with hounds, most commonly associated with the fox hunt...

In 2015, I made a series of sculptures called "HYPERland" illustrating the utopia promised by the "liberal democracy" and the dystopia that is rather created by the market and financ...

Nicholas Crombach is interested in the complex interactions between humans and animals. Using sporting and hunting as markers of longstanding traditions of both adversarial and collaborative relationships between humans and animals, Crombach examines the cultural significance and the complex issues percolating domestication and domination, play and survival in the 21st century. Crombach combines references to mythology via a striking aesthetic, creating works which revel in their contradictions and contrasts. Notably, the artist draws from the myth of Diana and Actaeon, which provides a poignant framework for this new series. In Ovid’s tale Actaeon, a hunter and grandson of King Cadmus, is in the forest with his dogs when he spies Artemis (Diana), the venerated goddess of the hunt, in her bath attended by her nymphs. Diana’s nymphs try to cover her modesty as the goddess feels violated by Actaoen’s brash curiosity. Diana splashes water upon Actaeon, robbing him from his ability to speak and turning him from a mortal man into a stag who flees into the forest only to be hunted down and killed by his own dogs. The hunter becomes the hunted. Crombach’s Fetch (2018) refers to the mythology of Diana and Actaeon in its last tragic hour, but the classical story of metamorphoses is presented as a game of fetch in the local park. Crombach creates a hybrid between the art historical imagery from paintings of hounds...

SKYLAR FEIN was born in Greenwich Village and raised in the Bronx. He has had many careers including teaching nonviolent resistance under the umbrella of the Quakers, working for a g...

SKYLAR FEIN was born in Greenwich Village and raised in the Bronx. He has had many careers including teaching nonviolent resistance under the umbrella of the Quakers, working for a g...

Hybrid II by Polly Little (2022). Plaster and acrylic paint.

Bridge To Total Freedom No.3 (Diminishing Returns) (2017) by Gary Sczerbaniewicz. Wood, laser-cut MDF, cast plastic, plaster, ink, acrylic, paper.

**ANNUAL SUPER SALE UNTIL MARCH 31ST ONLY** **THIS PRICE WON'T BE REPEATED AGAIN THIS YEAR - TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT** The "Lucky Baby Elephants" series is exclusive of Artist Mauro Ol...

**ANNUAL SUPER SALE UNTIL MARCH 31ST ONLY** **THIS PRICE WON'T BE REPEATED AGAIN THIS YEAR - TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT** The "Lucky Baby Elephants" series is exclusive of Artist Mauro Ol...