
Sabina Ott, "Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful," polystyrene, ink jet print on paper mounted on sintra, spray enamel, flashe, mirror and spider plant 49"H x 48" W x 14" D, 2011
“Eye and Mind” by Maurice Merleau Ponty
My recent works are intended to be microcosmic moments constituted by pop references, eternal currents, DIY style construction and play. Evolving out of the practice of painting, the things I make are sculptures, furniture and architectural elements simultaneously and, like props in a theatrical production, their presence stimulates actions, reactions and interactions between viewer, object and place. There is a fundamental strategy of jettisoning logic at work in my process by shifting scale, perspective and hierarchies of knowledge. Instead I create fantastical landscapes from debased craft materials. The resulting pieces move between two, three and four dimensions, becoming plateaus and tables, cliffs and chairs, light and lamps or video projections. By stretching painting out of it’s traditional rectangular frame and emphasizing the plastic, synthetic and fluid nature of the picture plane, my work repositions both subject and object allowing for the experience of penetration Merleau- Ponty cites in the quote above.
Another aspect my work explores is the notion of beauty, and, specifically, beauty as a signifier of class. My work elevates garish and childlike colors and materials such as glitter, florescent paint and plastic flowers, offering an alternative kind of beauty to the minimalist aesthetic and subdued color palette so often represented as high culture. My work emphasizes ornamentation rather than structure, focusing on heavily textured rather than refined surfaces. The process of painting, my painterly sensibility, cannot be contained by the rectangular canvas and spills out and over onto other forms. Messy and exuberant, my works celebrate the untamed and uncontrollable aspects of joy.
Edition for Aqua Miami
Sabina Ott, hope is the thing with feathers, DVD, 2011
http://sabinaott.com/home.html