THE SHAPE OF THE AFTERNOON
deCordova museum and Sculpture park
May 16 - October 6, 2014
Mixed media sculpture installation
Roberley Bell has transformed The Phyllis & Jerome Lyle Rappaport Roof Terrace into a colorful sculpture garden where nature and its synthetic representation commingle. By incorporating bird decoys, Astroturf, benches, flowering trees, and resin Blob sculptures in her installation, Bell invites a questioning of the "natural" in our everyday environment.
In her sumptuously colored Blobs on display at deCordova, the forms have absorbed their subjects. The Blobs are slick, hybrid forms that alternatively feature an outgrowth of colorful lines and in others totems of abstracted birds. To create these blob-ular sculptures,
The resulting polished veneers of the Blob sculptures highlight their obvious artificiality in contrast to more natural tree stump bases. This sharp juxtaposition, in addition to their titles: For HM, for now (an homage to Henry Moore), positions them in an art historical dialogue with early twentieth century sculptors like Barbara Hepworth, Jean Arp, and Henry Moore known for their biomorphically abstract sculptures inspired by living organisms.
Assistant Curator: Lexi Lee Sullivan
Catalog PDF
