Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Kristen Morgin. This is the artist’s first solo show. The opening reception will take place on Saturday, June 3 from 6:00-8:00pm.
Morgin’s sculptures, which are formed from a mixture of clay, cement, and glue over armatures of wood and wire, appear as unearthed or abandoned objects which nevertheless retain an unexpected life and elegance. In this show, aging and disintegrating peddle cars and carousel horses look like eerie childhood memories. Topolino, the largest work in the exhibition, is a stark image of mortality and decay whose intense materiality coexists with its ghost like presence.
According to Christopher Miles, "They are so surprising, so uncanny, as to seem without precedent, yet they have affinities with a strange assortment of objects, including ancient tomb guardians like the Qin dynasty terra-cotta soldiers found buried in central China, the revolutionary unfinished yet finished sculptures of Auguste Rodin, the bricolage towers of Simon Rodia, and the quasirealist sculptures of Liz Craft and Charles Ray. In character, they relate to the assemblages and tableaux of George Herms, Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, and Micahel C. McMillen, and to the rougher edges of a category of art that has come to be termed California funk."
Morgin was born in 1968 in Brunswick, Georgia. She completed her BA at California State University, Hayward, and her MFA at Alfred University. Her works have been included in the Sixty-first Scripps Ceramic Annual at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Claremont, California, and Because the Earth Is One-Third Dirt at the Colorado University Art Museum, Boulder. She is an assistant professor of ceramics at California State University, Long Beach.