Nicholas Crombach

Teddy

2016

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...

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...

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...

The first decades of the 21st century shaped the period of reconfiguration of the "world order", according to Pedro Pablo Gómez1, into three options: "rewesternalization, dewesternal...

Through his impactful self-portrait in thoughtfully ornamented ceramic, makes an uncomfortable connection between the slavery of the past and the slavery of today: overconsumption, a...

Beyond Sociology: The Act of Seeing a Person Text by Edwin Janzen It is hardly surprising that in our society perceptions of homeless persons remain two-dimensional, stereotypical, inadequate. Even for the rare administration tackling the problems of homelessness in an effective, meaningful way, the homeless person’s humanity is buried beneath a mountain of endless statistical markers: mental illness, substance abuse, soup-kitchen attendance, etc. The enormous negativity lingering about the resultant profile permits scant room for other, arguably important accoutrements of the human experience—character, emotion, intellect, beauty, relationship to divinity—and leaves homeless persons basically where they already are: on the street, the objects of middle-class loathing or pity. Struck by this depressing determinism, artist Bevan Ramsay set out to cast portrait busts of homeless persons (one woman, the others men), producing an edition in fine, white statuary Hydrocal plaster mounted on mahogany bases. These portraits, titled Lesser Gods...

Artist: Stephanie Todhunter Title: Ellie Year: 2019 Size: 8.5"x7"x4" Material: Plaster of Paris found objects, Spray Paint, alcohol inks Each piec...

Artist: Stephanie Todhunter Title: Donna Year: 2019 Size: 8"x7"x4" Material: Plaster of paris, found objects, spraypaint, alcohol inks

Artist: Stephanie Todhunter Title: Felicia Year: 2018 Size: 8"x7"x4" Medium: Plaster of paris, found objects, spraypaint, alcohol inks. Your Origin...

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

The Palace at 3am (2022) by Gary Sczerbaniewicz. Wood, laser cut & etched chipboard, latex, plaster, and cast plastic.

Admiral Byrd by Shelter Serra 2004 13”x9”x7.5” inches Cast plaster This plaster sculpture is an homage to classical sculpture and the legacy of Admiral Richard E. Byrd. Overshadowe...