I transform ephemeral events into tangible objects. I embody unseen forces in material to slow time and expand moments. The work is a response to grief—a refusal to accept impermanence and loss. I propose alternative possibilities to linear constructs of time; my sculptures insist that the past is not gone, but instead is a foundation upon which the present builds.
I ask my materials to show me how they want to move. I create a set of pressures with heat and gravity to which they react, conceptualizing the kiln as a condensed model of geological formation. The appearance of my pieces reflects the temperatures reached by the kiln, and their duration and order. In successive firings I layer materials, complicating their visible histories.
The sculptures echo forms from nature but are also carefully fabricated, blurring the false binary of "man-made" and "natural." They defy categorization, challenging viewers to slow down and abandon known vocabularies. Some pieces, hung from silk thread, seem to float above the ground despite their perceivable weight. Their position feels precarious, like a moment that cannot possibly last. Viewers feel the tension of material arrested in motion. The work implies a period of time and pace of change at a scale dramatically longer than human life. My work encourages viewers to think beyond our anthropocentric notion of time which has permitted a reckless attitude toward our planet. I believe that art, through the power of poetics, has the capacity to fundamentally change humanity’s understanding of itself in relation to the earth, and to time and space.
Alison Kudlow (b. 1981) lives and works in Brooklyn. She has BA from the University of Southern California, a post-baccalaureate degree from Brandeis University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Studio Art. She has shown at numerous galleries including Field Projects, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Flux Factory, UrbanGlass, Deanna Evans Projects, Doppelgänger Projects, and at Fullerton College. She presented her first NYC solo show, Meaningful Rituals in Irrational Times, at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2019.