Continuing through July 20, 2014
Midwest-based artist Luke Armitstead has a unique ability to capture within his sculptural works the energy of his gestures, animating static objects with complex networks of ceramic daubs. Armitstead’s practice is principally three-dimensional, though his pieces engage equally in notions of both volume and flatness. Thin, linear coils are suggestive of drawing, while layers of prodded, flattened pieces of ceramic are not unlike the way in which expressionist painters smush oils onto a canvas.
However, the energy of Armitstead’s pieces is a result of more than just his handling of material. Among several relief-style, wall-bound ceramic pieces are freestanding sculptures of ceramic combined with paper mache, wood, resin and steel. Figurative and organic, these freestanding pieces feature nebulous-looking faces, phallic appendages and brightly colored branches and tendrils sprouting from decorative vessels and platforms. Reaching and winding through space, these limbs feel quite alive — a quality indicative of the way in which Armitstead’s objects thoroughly transcend their media.
