Friday, January 6, 2012

lay your head...

fiber?
Nope it is the amazing work of stone carver Sebastian Martorana-hand carved marble.
I saw this pillow and was just struck. There has always been something about the soft becoming hard that moves me in my soul. This object looks so pliable and yet is rigid and weighs so much. so banal yet is made of something so permanent and in way archaic. The everyday raised up.

The pillow itself is a powerful object one of comfort and safety but also can be a weapon and represent a sense of suffocation.


Sebastian's work is beautifully done and has me completely intrigued. To me one of the most interesting and unexpected marble works I have seen. Taking such a glorified and historical medium and choosing to make such banal everyday objects, yet then raising these everyday objects to the level of glorified.


A press release from NYU announcing his work in a recent exhibition described it as:

un-commissioned memorials to the artist’s experiences, loves, and phobias, and celebrates the vagaries of daily existence.


They also described his work as pop art, which I disagree with. To me he is not using images from popular culture but from his own daily life and to me pop art always had some sort of irony or statement against high art that was completely removed from the personal. To me his work is very personal and therefore moving.
See more here.

2 comments:

Heidi Field Alvarez said...

Love, I so want to touch these.

Joetta M. said...

yes, but it would be strange our hand would expect something soft and warm but instead it would be hard an cold....interesting indeed.