Dam Stuhltrager Gallery
38 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, New York
Gae
Savannah is a contemporary sculptor whose subject is the idiosyncratic
face of beauty in a world where there are no moral absolutes. She builds
works which are on their face lush and sumptuous, totemic forms that
are the product of commercially manufactured textiles, decorative beads,
feathers, even Christmas ornaments. They are monuments to the joy in
building a complex and ambivalent impression, as is often present in
fanciful scenes of natural beauty, in the emotional reaction one has to
the presence of a loved one, or to an emotion that is as new, and
therefore relevant, as the event which determines it. For Savannah the
intellect and the senses are on equal footing. Her sculptures are
lovingly and obsessively constructed. They possess a lush dynamic which
combines aesthetic fascination and ironic ridicule--in what amounts to a
foolishness of intention, a love of kitsch and a value for materials
that are on their face fashionable and even trite. Totemic they are, and
symbolic of a belief in beauty that is infinite yet also ambivalent.
They are not perfect monuments, morally and conceptually pure, but are
constructed from a variety of sensate impressions that connect directly
with the transience of fashion and its tangent to the psychology of
ornament. Each section of a single sculptural work is either purchased
or decorated before the process of sampling and building commences to
create the works as sculptural wholes. They are stacked and stuffed,
embroidered and incandescent, vertical and layered. She wants to
communicate the quality inspiration that originates in the difference
between--and esthetic marriage of--a mysterious emotional interior and a
glorious and sublime exterior. Finally, Savannah wants to fascinate the
viewer with a multitude of sensations, to make them think about her
works as products of a foolish consistency that has left them with many
meanings instead of just one.
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