Groan Line, 2009, concrete, acrylic paint and mixed media
30 x 127 x 24 inches, Orient, New York
BravinLee programs is pleased to present Geronimo, a new artwork by Chris Astley. The exhibition opens Thursday June 10th 6-8 pm and runs through Friday, July 16th.
Astley collects and alters bags and containers to use as molds for making sculptures. He fills them with materials that they were never designed to support, in this case wet concrete, which stresses the seams and the shape of the containers. Gravity, mass and moisture allow the internal volume to reshape the form. What emerges is a new iteration of the form, imperfect and misshapen. The texture of the interior surface of the bag imprints onto the cast. The force of the weight leaves stress marks, and bends and pulls the straight seams to the point of bursting. Astley often removes only a part of the mold, leaving colorful fabric seams or panels in areas and selectively paints the individual pieces. The result is something between formalism and figuration, implying a different kind of container with the potential to hold not just material but also abstract emotional content.
Astley’s newest sculpture “Geronimo” is made of thirty of these forms stacked on top, leaning against, squished between, and oozing over each other. Each of the individual cast elements that he creates adds to the particular vernacular of the overall form. Variations on these filled bag/box forms are used over and over. Certain objects are more versatile while others have a more specific reading.
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