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    Antique Watches, Cameras, and Medical Equipment Morph Into Meticulous Steampunk Spiders

    
    Art

    #found objects
    #sculpure
    #spiders
    #steampunk
    #watches

    November 10, 2020
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Peter Szucsy, shared with permission
    For 25 years, art director and artist Peter Szucsy has filled his days with rendering the bizarre, sinister beasts that run rampant through video games. “I have made many creatures, monsters in the virtual world… but a few years ago I felt it is about time to create something different,” he says of his time working in the industry. “So I left my computer and made lots of my ideas come alive in the real world.”
    The result is a curious menagerie of steampunk spiders that the Budapest-based artist assembles with parts of vintage watches, cameras, and medical equipment. Each week, Szucsy scours a flea market near his home to find materials that include rare, pricey timepieces, although the artist notes he avoids dismantling anything that a museum or institution would value. In his studio, he parses the found metals and meticulously crafts the articulate eight-legged creatures.
    Szucsy holds a degree in illustration from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and plans to launch an online shop to sell some of the spiders in the coming days. You can follow his latest creatures, which he hopes to include dragonflies and praying mantises, on Instagram.

    #found objects
    #sculpure
    #spiders
    #steampunk
    #watches

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    Textural Sculptures by Artist Jessica Drenk Use Junk Mail, Book Pages, and Q-Tips to Explore Materiality

    
    Art

    #books
    #installation
    #paper
    #pencils
    #sculpure
    #wood

    October 22, 2020
    Grace Ebert

    “Dendrite” (2019), Q-tips and plaster. All images © Jessica Drenk, courtesy of Galleri Urbane, shared with permission
    Montana-born artist Jessica Drenk (previously) employs simple materials, like shopping flyers and standard No. 2 pencils, to create organic sculptures that are chaotic and arresting explorations of the substances themselves. Bundled Q-tips spread across a site-specific installation like the roots of a tree, a carved section of plywood reveals concentric patterns, and strips of junk mail are plastered together in long waves.
    While Drenk’s latest series, titled Transmutations, is diverse and ranges from wall pieces to cavernous sculptures, each artwork explores materiality and how disparate shapes and textures combine to create forms that are new both physically and conceptually. The artist explains in a statement:
    In treating everyday objects as raw material to sculpt, I practice a form of conceptual alchemy: through physically manipulating these objects their meanings become transmuted. Each piece is a direct response to material—a subversion of the meanings associated with it, and a reference to the life cycle of objects through time.
    If you’re in Dallas, Transmutations is on view at Galleri Urbane through October 31. Otherwise, follow Drenk’s textural works on Artsy, and watch an interview with the artist at her studio below.

    “Contour 3” (2020), carved plywood, 47 x 38 x 3 inches
    “Implement 68” (2020), pencils, 22 x 18 x 17 inches
    “Cerebral Mapping” (2020), books and wax, 132 x 80 inches
    “Compression 3” (2020), books, wax on wood panel, and wood frame, 44 x 38 x 2 inches
    “Dendrite” (2019), Q-tips and plaster
    Top: “Aggregate 3” (2020), junk mail, 28 x 130 x 2.25 inches. Bottom: “Aggregate 2” (2020), junk mail and plaster, 20 x 78 x 2.5 inches
    Left: “Circulation 18” (2020), books and wax, 31 x 29 x 1.5 inches. Right: “Circulation 19” (2020), junk mail and cardboard, 36 x 36 x 1.5 inches

    

    #books
    #installation
    #paper
    #pencils
    #sculpure
    #wood

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
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