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Dubhe Carreņo Gallery Contemporary Ceramic Art |
Cynthia Consentino
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Artist's Statement
My sculptures utilize the figure to explore a variety of issues such as gender, social roles, culture, and perception. Metaphor and story are used to make connections, provide layers of meaning and incorporate the universal within the personal. Objects and/or qualities from different worlds are juxtaposed and exaggeration and/or distortion are used to address dualities and apparent incongruities within human experience.
For example, Wolf Girl and Rabbit Girl arise from the world of fairy tales and make-believe. Like fairy tales, these two sculptures use story and the imagination to investigate the nature of things. Familiar ingredients are reassembled into unfamiliar configurations. Things are not what one would expect, reflecting the complexity of our cultural experience.
My most recent work incorporates floral elements with the figure. Flowers are highly symbolic and gender specific. By utilizing the flower in depictions of both male and female children, a dialogue regarding gender and culture evolves.
The desire to understand, or at least know better, those things which mystify me is the major impetus for my art. There are those things from both the present and past, however commonplace or seemingly without import, that are compelling and hold an emotional charge beyond what is immediately definable. By making such things the focus of an art work, the indefinable is brought into an arena for exploration and play, where new combinations of things are possible and new insights inevitable. My explorations and tinkering are in pursuit of knowledge and my intentions are to transform: to change one form, substance, perception, state, or nature into another.
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