Josh Atlas - Michelle Carla Handel
dal 2/3/2012 al 28/3/2012
Segnalato da
2/3/2012
Josh Atlas - Michelle Carla Handel
Raid Projects, Los Angeles
Hungry Me, Tender You is an exhibition of figurative sculptures and drawings. Both artists approach their work with a sense of humor and play, creating forms that straddle the line between sensuous and revolting.
curated by Carrie McILwain
RAID Projects is proud to present Hungry Me, Tender You, an exhibition of figurative sculptures and drawings by Josh Atlas and Michelle Carla Handel. Please join us for a sumptuous affair of form, texture, and writhing candy-coated bodies.
The works presented here are figures of desire. They are abstracted personal lusts driven by the need to touch, coerce and manipulate materials into strange bodies. Both artists approach their work with a sense of humor and play, creating forms that straddle the line between sensuous and revolting.
Atlas creates adorable “girlfriends” out of pool toys, icing, donuts and googly eyes in an attempt to satisfy his jumbled desires for love, sex, and comfort eating. Rather than hide his personal lusts, he uses humor to make work that is equally absurd and empathic.
Handel’s forms are perversely intimate and alluring. She uses textiles to make her sculptures appear soft or cuddly, even as they bulge and contort around their underlying tensions. Handel's work speaks to the constraints levied upon body or flesh, that of time, biology, or gravity.
Underneath their playful and humorous sides, both bodies of work show vulnerability as they grapple with failure. Atlas’ dessert women are earnestly trying to satisfy a range of bodily urges, but ultimately, they know they are untouchable. Handel’s sculptures seem to be burdened by their own mass, with wrinkled limbs that are coiling around themselves, too tired to hold a pose.
Josh Atlas received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2005), where hebecame interested in integrating comedy and art. He has participated in exhibitions at Allegra LaViola Gallery (New York), Daniel Cooney Fine Art (New York), MonkeyTown (Brooklyn), and NTBA Gallery (Los Angeles) and participated in benefit auctions for Equality California and the Red Cross. Josh Atlas lives and works in Los Angeles.
Michelle Carla Handel received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2011. Exhibitions have included a solo show, ‘Strange Skin’, at WEEKEND gallery, and inclusion in 2011 GLAMFA and BOOM Socal MFA shows. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3rd,7 – 10 pm
RAID Projects
602 Moulton Ave - Los Angeles
Free admission