Carole Feuerman “Hyperbodies?” Hyperrealism… Sculptures of Excitement

“Hyper-realism of the form and tangible concreteness of existence seem to transcend the body, using it to refer to one another, changing the expression of the invisible, élan spiritual, in an uninterrupted dialogue with the viewer’s inner eye.”

Carol Feuerman, Giving and Taking II, 2008. Bronze (unique), 24 x 7 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Carole Feuerman “Hyperbodies?” Hyperrealism… Sculptures of Excitement.”

Ilaria d’Adamio

Thursday June 16th, AIR Art Gallery presented a private viewing of the exhibition “Hyperbodies” by Carole Feuerman, the celebrated New York artist who returned to Florence, leading us to the discovery of a new reality.

As the viewer crosses the gallery threshold, she is immediately hit by a sudden and unconscious blindness, in which everything appears clearer: busts of swimmers come out from the walls, hung with heads tilted slightly backwards.

The warm colors of the costumes, the dark and sensual skin, light and ethereal, rendered in oil on resin by Feuerman’s refined hand, emphasize the lines of the voluptuousness soft female form. Magnetic sirens, icons of a renewed pop-art, attract the eye and lead the viewer to investigate behind the apparently perfect anatomy. And the siren’s slight smile, complete with half-closed eyes, harken to the hidden, valuable pleasure of a renewal, perhaps from the water itself.

Two pieces in particular project a desire tied and enclosed in the privacy of inner harmony, grasped in its cosmic fullness and prolonged in time. (Moran (With Red Suit) #1 and Twin Generals #1 / 6).

Hyper-realism of the form and tangible concreteness of existence seem to transcend the body, using it to refer to one another, changing the expression of the invisible, élan spiritual, in an uninterrupted dialogue with the viewer’s inner eye.

Soft water droplets caress the skin and assure us, catching a moment full of the feeling that moves the soul in a suspension from transcendental reality.

Looking around, the attraction brings us closer to the element of fire, it’s already done its work, leaving figures forged on a wall, emptied by a spasmodic struggle. It tells of woman, whose body was forged in the fires, of which a cast of bronze, mixed with copper and brass is left, the final shield of a battle between ancestral instincts and emotions, sharp resonant notes of a violin.

They are the Valkyries by Carole, who as Magda emerge in all their voluptuous beauty, proud and ecstatic, caught in the singular oblique perspectives revealing the sweetness of a hidden profile, taken from behind in the evidence of an eroded epidermis (Juno), which appears in layers of shades from yellow-gold, red-copper to leather-brown-bronze shaped in the matter. The holes of the bronze, cast and taut, strong hands to hold the sternum, scepter of the soul, outline arms not visible and recast in the matter, trapped in the land, primary dimensions of belonging.

Hands are shaken and in tension bear witness to the universal inspiration of a hug (Giving and Taking I-II), the momentum of a moment is sublime in the paradigm of loving, reciprocal giving and receiving, embedded in the strength of the matter in a surreal time of sacral eternity.

The skin layers are decomposed and recomposed as a symbol of the chaos of contradictory interiority. They beg the question: in which opposites do they coexist?

It’s the game of life between land, water and fire, life and death, empty and full, visible and invisible, which coexist in the last room in a video installation, in which one senses a body emerging from the playful transparencies of water, which floats musically on the wall.

Carol Feuerman, Juno, 2008. Bronze (unique) , 41 x 17 x 6.5 in. Courtesy of the artist.

So what is the dimension of reality that we believe to hold in our hands?

Is it the visible defined representations in space and time, or the invisible contradictory world of interiority?

The evidence of bodies in resin or in bronze by Carole Feuerman reveals a hyper-real place, the invisible inter-zone between exterior and interior, whose strength is such, as it is deep, direct, and unknown in the experiential sense, the sense called into question by the artist: touch.

Tactile sensuality, cryptic and suggestive in its immediate perception, recalls a profound reality, devoid of the visual form, of rational consciousness.

Is it the feeling of a moment, the perfect and abstract, a representative description, is the actual size more true?

The curves of the voluptuous feminine, the slashed lines of bronze, the floating movement of the waves decline and the nature of humanity transcends the border of skin.

Special thanks to the artist and Mrs.Eileen Kaminsky.

“Hyperbodies” di Carole Feuerman
Curated by Antonio Budetta, Federica Cirri e Michelangelo Bastiani.
Aria art gallery
Borg SS. Apostoli, 40r
50123 Firenze