these, our precious scars
April 27 - May 19, 2018
ICOSA Collective presents these, our precious scars, a collaborative exhibition of sculpture, photography and installation created by sculptor Erin Cunningham and multi-disciplinary artist Alyssa Taylor Wendt. Taking inspiration from the Japanese philosophies behind wabi-sabi and kintsugi, the pair has joined forces and mediums to investigate imperfection, longevity, hope and revealing seams. Their processes of melting metal, casting, tearing and gilding consider alchemy and layers of inherited narrative to explore failure, impermanence, industrialization and the misrepresentation of brokenness. From rising Phoenix birds, to remnants of the auto industry and interactive vulnerability, the show will prove to be a healing journey into the spirit of our times. The last show for ICOSA in this physical space, the exhibition is a fitting testimony to the positive power of change and creation by creating magic out of destitution.
Alyssa Taylor Wendt is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator that works in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her recent projects reference themes of ritual, animism, monuments, mysticism, the primordial, architecture, gender and mortality using video, sculpture, staged photographs, sound and performance. The work tends to provoke questions in the viewer with dark and evocative aesthetics and multiple layers of perceived truth. She earned her BA from NYU and her MFA from Bard College. Transplanted from New York City, she has shown in numerous national and international exhibitions and performed at The Museum of Art and Design in New York, envoy gallery, The Fusebox Festival and Deitch Projects and completed residencies in Iceland and Norway. She is currently finishing her opus multi-channel video work HAINT and just curated an epic exhibition about death and transformation with over 60 artists at DEMO Gallery in Austin. She enjoys darkness, gospel blues and bad jokes.
Erin Cunningham is a Texas based artist living and working in Austin. She received her BFA with a focus in metalwork from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003 and her MFA from the University of Texas in Austin in 2007. Her sculpture work uses material combinations, such as cast iron, and the female figure to explore dualities of masculine and feminine, disposable and precious, fragility and strength. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo. She was selected to curator the Art on the Green show in Wichita Falls TX, which was an outdoor show featuring all women sculptors. She has been an artist in residence at BAER Art Center in Hofsos, Iceland as well as Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama. Erin is currently an instructor at Texas State University and at the Art School at The Contemporary Austin.