Bianca Hlywa at Gossamer Fog


Bianca Hlywa is an artist who fuses beauty with disgust. Her chosen medium is the symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) used in fermented foodstuffs such as kombucha. The powerful vinegar odor means that you tend to smell Hlywa’s works well before you can see them. In this case, the stench hits as you descend the staircase to Gossamer Fog’s underground gallery.

Inside, Hlywa’s sculptural installation Thermaloop (all works 2022) mounts a roughly 440-pound SCOBY specimen (grown over five months) onto a webbing substrate, which is submerged within a large rectangular vat of brown liquid. A motorized steel pulley repeatedly hoists the organic mass up out of the far end of the tank, before lowering it gently back in again. In the process, Thermaloop encourages viewers to look at the surface of the organic mass like one would a painting—to trace its complex textures, subtle flesh tones, and lustrous sheen.

An accompanying looped HD video, Orbital Shakes, shows lumps of SCOBY lying limply on a patch of grass, like washed-up jellyfish. Several curious turkeys investigate this strange material. The camera focuses on the tumescent fleshy quiver of the birds’ snoods and caruncles as they peck violently at the organic mass. The only sound is that of passing traffic.

In Hlywa’s work, animals are not cute, landscapes never picturesque or sublime. There is no aesthetic idealization of the natural world, because it is no longer clear what “natural” means. In blurring the organic with the industrial, the domesticated with the feral, these works also refuse to endorse hypercapitalist visions of a post-human future through bio-tech. They are fascinating and utterly gross.



Source link

We use cookies to give you the best online experience. By agreeing you accept the use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy.

Close Popup
Privacy Settings saved!
Privacy Settings

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems.

Technical Cookies
In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
  • wordpress_test_cookie
  • wordpress_logged_in_
  • wordpress_sec

WooCommerce
We use WooCommerce as a shopping system. For cart and order processing 2 cookies will be stored. This cookies are strictly necessary and can not be turned off.
  • woocommerce_cart_hash
  • woocommerce_items_in_cart

Decline all Services
Save
Accept all Services
Open Privacy settings