/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>2429944
Multi-leveled. Based on the poetic notion of animated minerals (through growth), inspired by stalagmites. The poetic element is key to a science fiction story I'm going to publish next year, with references to alchemy - the magnum opus, colour changes from yellow to red - represented by rust. In my story an occultist group of people adorn themselves in rust, much the same as people historically have done with gold. The story features a rogue planet, made up of glowing iron oxide, travelling through our solar system, erasing the memories of everyone who hasn't isolated their heads with helmets made if lead (this will also connect with sculptures I'm making,) thus giving rise to a symbolic cult.

We usually see rust in "perfect", industrially manufactured objects, that due to time and the elements start to look more and more like nature, of which it originated (turning brown, less perfect, more chaotic), witness to that our attempts at control and order are only temporary.

The objects I'm appropriating for the sculpture are various tools, that through the assembly will disconnect from their intended purposes, becoming irrational forms in replacement for the symbolic equivalent of the cross, grail and various other religious items. I figure the sculptures in this series as altars or idols of a fictional culture, risen from an irrational need for a system of belief in a world strangely void of meaning and built out of trash.

The other elements in the sculpture are heat, which I often work with (alchemy, again), represented by the base made out of an 1960s electric heater, and bin bags I've melted over fabric and painted gold for adornment purposes, sealing/finishing the object, as an art historical nod to saloon galleries, and simultaneously proposing recycling as the order of existence, giving it a skin in degradation. The fabrics are intended as a medical notion, sealing of wounds etc. The base is filled with both un-fired and fired clay.