hydrolyzed collagen and air buble, 11ftx4ftx4ft

Vast expanses of times are measured differently than are distinct moments.

Seconds pass quickly and mark the present with increasing fleetingness, while epochs capture thousands or millions of years clustered together in the very distant past. Today presents a unique scenario as humans have ushered themselves into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, and finally acknowledge their impact on the environment. The term Anthropocene was widely popularized by Paul J. Crutzen in the early 2000s, but had been used initially in 1938 by Vladimir Vernadsky, a Soviet cosmologist, to mean scientific thought as a geological force. Art has long been understood as a harbinger for changes in collective unconsciousness and becomes a potent tool to analyze societal shifts. The works of Magdalena Dukiewiez and Edwin Isford reflect the current shift in consciousness that marks the Anthropocene-from Nature-as-Other towards an idea of Na-ture-as-Self where human-made material excess and organic matter are no longer seen as distinct in Nature.

In the ongoing series of sculptures entitled Bastard, Magdalena Dukiewicz uses the collagen produced in large-scale animal processing as a way to explore material excess and simulate the presence of a living body. Bastard IVis about 10feet long, relatively rigid in structure and hard to the touch, like plastic or acrylic, but looks as delicate as a snakeskin that has been shed, floating in mid-air. The collagen is biodegradable and extremely porous, expanding and contracting based on changes in humidity and atmospheric pressure, making the sculpture a kind of living organism that appears to almost breathe in sync with its environment. This implied anthropomorphism posits that unused excess is the equivalent to a societal bastard, abandoned and rejected, despite being of our own making.

by Jesse Firestone for Are We in SYNC exhibition catalog 

bastard  ( 2018)

MAGDALENA  DUKIEWICZ