Art

#Casey Curran #flowers #insects #kinetic sculpture #sculpture #video

Casey Curran’s Gilded Skeletal Sculptures and Kinetic Blooms Explore Bodily Degeneration

March 28, 2023

Grace Ebert

How does the connection between our bodies and memories change as we age? Artist Casey Curran (previously) attends to this question in a new series of kinetic sculptures. Titled Carrion Blooms, the works reference degeneration and decay and how the body’s stamina wanes. “We can all recall those days when our energy seemed endless, twenty-four-hour benders where we somehow managed to cram everything in; work, school, hobbies, friends, and family. The time felt limitless with possibilities,” Curran says.

Hand-cranks animate laser-cut insects and flowers made of mylar, which flutter, blossom, and retreat to their static positions. Emphasizing inevitable transformation and the fleeting nature of life, the artist likens the gilded skeletal structures to scaffolding, a prized foundation “to place the future on…Carrion Blooms is about how we change over time, how we use our days differently with age, and what it means to let go of the past,” he says. “What will be left when we are gone, and who will remember the arrangement we made?”

Carrion Blooms is on view from April 1 to May 6 at Heron Arts in San Francisco, and you can find more from Curran on his site and Instagram.

 

A gif of mylar flowers opening and closing

A photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

A photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

A detail photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

A detail photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

A photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

A photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

A detail photo of a gilded skeletal sculpture with white mylar flowers on a black backdrop

#Casey Curran #flowers #insects #kinetic sculpture #sculpture #video

 

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