FLORENCIA ESCUDERO
November 14, 2019 - January 18, 2020
Florencia Escudero’s debut solo exhibition at the gallery features new sculptures that explore the relationship between the female form and objects. Sculptures juxtapose soft and handmade components with digitally rendered imagery and printing.
Feminist theory, cyber culture, and an embrace of various techniques such as digital photo collage, hand sewing, and silk-screening culminate in Escudero's sculptures. Spandex and satin combine with rigid components such as 3d-printed plastic and laser-cut mirrors in the shape of scissors, teardrops, and spirals. These materials place each sculpture in the realm of both the machine-made and the handmade. Sculpted handbags, found stockings, and wearable blankets form torsos, appendages, and portions of the female visage, punctuated with various direct and sideways gazes.
“When making these pieces I am thinking about the history of feminist art that looks at the objectification of women's bodies. I want to flip the expectation and look at how objects become human. We currently live in a time in which AI and robots are no longer limited to the realm of science fiction, but are part of our reality. I wonder how the design of automata reflects and inherits both positive and negative traits.”
Florencia Escudero was born in Singapore in 1987 and grew up in Mendoza, Argentina. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Escudero received an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale University School of Art in 2012 and a BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2010. Her works have been exhibited at Kristen Lorello, New York, NY, Instituto Cervantes, New York, NY, and The Steuben Gallery, Pratt Institute, New York, NY, among other venues. She was a 2016 year-long Artist in Residence at the Loisaida Center, New York, NY, and has also completed residencies at Art Farm, Marquette, NE, and Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle, WA. Works by Escudero have been discussed in Editorial Magazine, Aether Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, and The American Reader. She is an editor and founder of Precog Magazine.
Florencia Escudero / sculptures in process / video by Matthew Kohn