A veritable generator of worlds, Randy Polumbo combines his wide-ranging study of horticulture, engineering, and regenerative design to create impressive interactive environments. Touting the use of hand-finished, homegrown, beaded mycelium (mushroom) panels; hand blown glass flowers with hand-silvered pistils and stamens; and a variety of applications for reflective highway glass marker beads, Polumbo’s installations feel like stepping onto another planet. And rightfully so: some feature silver-stepped hills in a fully-chromed room you can walk and lounge on; mesmerizing and hypnotic hand-blown glass and custom electronics and lighting; a lighthouse transformed into a psychedelic artist’s haven. Each installation explores a theme, a color, and a concept, from an space-age airstream trailer kaleidoscope to a neo-New Age ketamine resort, if the overwhelming visual experience doesn’t make you say “Woah!” then the ideas behind them certainly will. Polumbo’s projects center the formal and elemental aspects of a site such as light, water, and earth to draw our attention to geological time—that is, processes beyond the scale of human perception. The works reveal their own chronology, framing the simultaneity of growth, endurance, and impending collapse.
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Pensive Eye
Contrasting the global, pandemic-enforced trend of living life through technology instead in person, Matthew Couper’s exploration of what social isolation might look like starts from an island in the middle of the ocean. For the artist, desert islands and desert proper are both metaphors for survival and reflect a bigger picture of what survival means […]
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Green Fairy Garden Gate
La Forgia started as a dream of owner Enzo Cinquegrana more than 20 years ago. A sculptor frustrated with the art gallery scene, Enzo dove head first into forging as a method to express his sculptural abilities. When he discovered forged metal could satisfy his need to create sculptural forms and his desire to have […]
