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ALLISON SVOBODA |
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In Defense of Beauty at OS Projects Rob Osborn as photo credit |
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Allison Svoboda’s artwork functions as an extended meditation on our natural environment. At OS Projects, Svoboda will be exhibiting two bodies of related work: “radical” plein air paintings the artist created at various locations in collaboration with bodies of water that are under threat, and torn paper installations from her Mandala series. Svoboda’s plein air paintings are an ode to the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and their watersheds. Svoboda combined water from these sites with water-soluble pigments and exposed the work to water movement, wind and land-derived materials such as sand, salt and plant matter. Akin to automatism practiced by the Dadaists and Surrealists, the paintings are made in a sense from a “spirit hand,” as natural forces and materials are allowed to take over the surfaces of the works, imbuing them with the intrinsic character of the water and surrounding land. Like the plein air works, Svoboda’s Mandala series is influenced by organic forms and patterns (such as fractal geometry) and guided by both design and instinct. To create the works in the series, the artist first made hundreds of small paintings with thousands of brushstrokes, after which she collated the paintings, tore out images that align, then constructed from them a visually complex, wall-mounted collage of self-similar shapes. The paper’s ephemeral quality and rhythmic brushwork evoke a Buddhist mandala and encourage extended contemplation. Predicated on equal doses of inquiry and revelation, Svoboda’s artwork asks us to pay close attention to the dichotomy between destruction and growth that defines the natural world--as well as the fear, braided with wonder, that encapsulates our response to it. — Vera Scekic, curator OS Projects |
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"Allison Svoboda displays a mastery of mundane materials, transforming paper, ink, and the act of collage into wildly different but similarly engaging studies of space and structure and organic form" — Carmen Hermo, Assistant Curator for Collections, Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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Upcoming: 'In Defense of Beauty', solo show, OS Projects, Racine, WI. February-April 12 Walker Gallery, Denver March 14- April 2025 ‘Earth as our True Nature’, Manierre
Dawson Gallery, West Shore Community College, Ludington, MI |
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