34.044475879474845° N, -118.64673408513035 ° W, 202170 x 64 x 37cmSign in to view price
Details
MaterialGallery
cobalt, aquaresin, fiberglass, aluminum, led lights, transformer, cableSoft Opening
Description
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The artwork features a sculptural piece composed of a dark, abstract form resembling a spacecraft or futuristic helmet. The dominant hue is a deep navy blue, contrasted with a translucent, curved visor or shield that appears to float atop the main structure. The overall shape and composition suggest a sense of dynamic movement and technological innovation, with the pointed protrusion adding a sense of power and purpose. The artist's use of mixed media and the sculpture's imposing presence on a raised platform indicate a focus on exploring themes of technology, space exploration, and the human relationship with the unknown. This piece likely reflects the artist's vision of a speculative future or an imagined technological advancement. ...
Influenced by 1990s TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files, Olivia Erlanger is interested in combining the backdrop of middle-class Americana and the American Dream with elements of the uncanny and the supernatural. In her 2020 installation, ‘Ida! Ida! Ida!’ Erlanger depicts mermaid tails protruding from washing machines in a neon-lit laundromat. For her, this location is a microcosm for the economic and socio-political forces that clash in the everyday, from the housing crisis and disparate development to gentrification.’ Erlanger’s gesture chains the mythological mermaid – considered independent and liberated, symbolic of transformation and transcending the limits of one’s body – with the washing machine, a motif of middle-class domestication and automated, mundane cyclicality. In ‘Home is a Body’ (2020), Erlanger produces plexiglass portals reminiscent of ominous CCTV domes in reference to the stranglehold of surveillance capitalism. Or perhaps they are snow globes, within which one expects to find idealised romantic and rose-tinted images that remind us of childhood. While Erlanger’s works are like rooms in a doll’s house, they are furnished with distinctly modern fixtures and rendered in Millennial Pink and pastel blue, symbolising consumerism and the diluted yet still unobtainable ambitions of the contemporary American Dream. ...
Founded in 2018 by Antonia Marsh, Soft Opening presents UK-based and international emerging contemporary artists, and often their first solo presentations in London. Focusing on work pushing the conventional limits of medium or material, the gallery presents a wide range of media and practices. Soft Opening built its early program with projects that responded to the gallery’s unique first location in Piccadilly Circus Underground Station. Opening a second space in East London in 2019 saw programming strategy develop as Soft Opening began participating in international art fairs and representing artists. Programming is now focused at this East London space. In 2020 the gallery began publishing artist monographs - the first was with Tenant of Culture in 2020 followed by Gina Fischli in 2021 and Sin Wai Kin in 2022. ...
