NUD NOB, SARAH LUCAS

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Editorial Staff

New York, Gladstone Gallery is currently exhibiting an amazing solo show by Sarah Lucas, her first Us in nearly a decade. Lucas was born in Holloway London in 1962 and she is an English artist part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Lucas has been working all his career with found objects and readily available materials to create works imbued with a distinctive and provocative visual language. Drawing on art historical references, cultural stereotypes, and the British tabloid culture, Lucas creates works that never stop challenging our conception of sexuality, gender and existence. Show at Galdstone features some large scale bronzes of over sized vegetables  and phallic shaped concrete sculptures because human anatomy has long fascinated Lucas. The form of the phallus in fact has been a recurring theme to her one that she sees as “a perfectly self-contained sculptural form, ‘pregnant’ with meaning.” Referencing the Greek gods of love and fertility, respectfully, Lucas uses the titling of her work to infuse the sculptures with a humorous gesture. Language and its potential for both poetic alliteration and sly allusion is central to Lucas’s works, and her titles often draw on slang, puns, and historical references to invoke allusions that are variously erotic, romantic, and funny. Sculptures, surrounded by some Lucas portraits, provide a tactile and immediate experience and drive us to the ephemeral. Composed of corporeal fragments and organic forms, the sculptures intimate a sense of absence, suggesting an innate fragility within their outwardly sturdy form.

 

At Gladstone New York until 27th April.