NADA
Odessa Straub
Moltings
NADA
Booth 5.15
May 5-8, 2022
SEPTEMBER is excited to present Moltings, a solo booth with Odessa Straub. Straub will include new sculptures that flank the walls and drape from rafter to floor. In addition, she has created works on paper and canvas that correlate to her sculptures through shape and content.
Straub begins with sourcing and collecting materials, some of which have been in her possession for years and others acquired from online sites, thrift stores, junk yards and discarded refuse. Her searching and selection process is as intensive—and playful—as her making. Once accumulated, Straub’s objects are disassembled, reconfigured, and connected to perform the function of suspending a vessel. Employing physics, Straub humorously subverts her objects to render them useful. Using the Walstad Method of planting, the artist layers soil, gravel, and water in each vessel to sustain submerged flora.
Bodily and performative, Straub’s evocative sculptures embody a particular role that intermingles sexual play with the often-misperceived role of caregiving. Toying with this possibly uncomfortable intersection, she challenges assumptions around power and empathy. Straub sidles up to the edges of taboo and tension, positioning care as the focal tenet through which to examine connection, sexuality and sexualization.
The manifestation of each work is a form of molting: moving through discarded or shed personas that no longer serve the artist. Many of the objects themselves are from her past and bare signs of exhaustive use. Purging items connected to her body and home, Straub transforms them into functional parts of a new whole. She physically persuades materials to behave at their limits—bound, hung, stretched and tied together in suspended action. For Straub, this behavior is linked to survival, being individually pushed to breaking points and collectively sustained in support.
Moltings
NADA
Booth 5.15
May 5-8, 2022
SEPTEMBER is excited to present Moltings, a solo booth with Odessa Straub. Straub will include new sculptures that flank the walls and drape from rafter to floor. In addition, she has created works on paper and canvas that correlate to her sculptures through shape and content.
Straub begins with sourcing and collecting materials, some of which have been in her possession for years and others acquired from online sites, thrift stores, junk yards and discarded refuse. Her searching and selection process is as intensive—and playful—as her making. Once accumulated, Straub’s objects are disassembled, reconfigured, and connected to perform the function of suspending a vessel. Employing physics, Straub humorously subverts her objects to render them useful. Using the Walstad Method of planting, the artist layers soil, gravel, and water in each vessel to sustain submerged flora.
Bodily and performative, Straub’s evocative sculptures embody a particular role that intermingles sexual play with the often-misperceived role of caregiving. Toying with this possibly uncomfortable intersection, she challenges assumptions around power and empathy. Straub sidles up to the edges of taboo and tension, positioning care as the focal tenet through which to examine connection, sexuality and sexualization.
The manifestation of each work is a form of molting: moving through discarded or shed personas that no longer serve the artist. Many of the objects themselves are from her past and bare signs of exhaustive use. Purging items connected to her body and home, Straub transforms them into functional parts of a new whole. She physically persuades materials to behave at their limits—bound, hung, stretched and tied together in suspended action. For Straub, this behavior is linked to survival, being individually pushed to breaking points and collectively sustained in support.
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SEPTEMBER