Here is our second look at some of the artists featured in MOCCA’s current exhibition, “Ineffable Plasticity,” with a focus on Toronto artist, Susy Oliveira.
Susy Oliveira, Petal Piece (2011)
MOCCA’s most recent exhibition, “Ineffable Plasticity” examines the role of nature in our lives and takes the stance that “all human attributes and activity are an expression of nature…an unstoppable force that governs and defines us, challenging the notion that anything could be construed as unnatural, whether psychological or physical.”
Susy Oliveira‘s work addresses this often complicated relationship between what we consider “natural” and what we consider artificial. She uses “unnatural” elements, like the chromira prints and foamcore that make up her sculptures, to represent the “natural,” simultaneously addressing humans’ repeated efforts to control and reproduce nature. The pieces at the MOCCA all reference traditional notions of nature, either by using photographs of plants, or in the case of Petal Piece, reproducing the structure of a flower. These elements, however, are shaped and sculpted into harsh, 3-D, geometrical forms that jut out, with sharp angles, towards the viewer. What results is a hybrid of technological and biological impulses that aptly address humans’ contemporary relationship with nature, in an age of genetic modification, biotechnology, and amplified efforts to both alter and contain the world around us.
