Artwork
#gems
#set up
#Lauren Fensterstock
#mosaics
#sculpture
#stars
April 29, 2024
Grace Ebert
When an enormous star dies, it collapses with an infinite explosion that produces a supernova. In some circumstances, the stays develop into a black gap, the enigmatic phenomenon that traps every little thing it comes into contact with—even gentle itself.
The life cycle of stars informs the latest works by artist Lauren Fensterstock, who applies the ideas of such stellar transformations to human interplay and connection. From her studio in Portland, Maine, she creates dense mosaics of fragmented crystals and stones together with quartz, obsidian, and tourmaline that glimmer when hit by gentle and kind shadowy areas of intrigue when not.
Cloaking sculptures and large-scale installations, Fensterstock’s dazzling compositions evoke pure kinds like flowers, stars, and clouds and communicate to cosmic and terrestrial entanglement. “I’ve to confess that I agonize over the location of each single (piece),” the artist shares. “There are days the place it flows collectively like a magical puzzle and different days the place I place, rip out, and redo a sq. inch of floor repeatedly for hours. Even amidst an enormous mass of fabric, each second has to have that feeling of easy perfection.”
The gems are generally firmly embedded inside the floor and at others, seem to blow up outward in an brisk eruption. Celestial implosions are apt metaphors for transformation, the artist says, and “pairs of stars communicate to the complexities of private connections… Within the latest work—which explores huge sky maps full of a number of constellations—I try to maneuver past a single star or an remoted self to point out the entanglement of the cosmic complete.”
Whereas lovely on their very own, the dear supplies discover broader themes in combination. Simply as astrology makes use of constellations and cosmic machinations to supply perception and which means into the unknown, Fensterstock’s jeweled sculptures chart relationships between the person and the universe to attract nearer to the divine.
The artist is at the moment working towards a solo present opening this fall at Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem. Impressed by her each day meditation follow, she’ll current elaborately mapped creations of lotuses, black holes, fallen stars, and a bow and arrow that seem as choices to the universe. Along with that exhibition, the artist is exhibiting in Could on the Shelburne Museum and can attend a residency in Italy this September, to work on a ebook about entanglement and artist muses. Discover extra about these tasks and her multi-faceted follow on her web site and Instagram.
#gems
#set up
#Lauren Fensterstock
#mosaics
#sculpture
#stars
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