Hard plaster depicts soft and languid objects. Worlds of strange body parts and floppy interior architecture explore repressed anxieties and fantasies around bodies. The sculptures have a fantasy life of their own. They want to be about pleasure and freedom, but are somehow flawed, burdened by their materiality and oddity. The artworks are too stiff or droopy, too depressed or neurotic to get out of the house and live out their dreams. Languishing at home, the sculptures dream of follies to completely and thoroughly free the body.
We're all ghosts now, living off the trash heaps of disquietude. Fantasy and sexuality offer the possibility of freedom from the machines of immiseration. Part-object hybrids and deformations point to tensions and accommodations of the body. The viewers’ feelings about their own flesh and experiences are awakened. What is masculine or feminine or alien is constantly questioned. What is demodé or rejected is loved. Queerness is offered to everyone as an escape route from the modern condition.
BIO
Deric Carner has had solo shows at Romer Young, Trestle Projects, Four AM, Louis V E.S.P., and Tent. Rotterdam. Group shows include at Foreland, FIERMAN, PROTO Gallery, Radiator Gallery, Present Company, NurtureArt, EFA Project Space, Southern Exposure and CAC, Vilnius. He has had residencies at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and MacDowell, and had studios at Root Division and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. He received MFA degrees from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, NL and the University of Plymouth UK, and a BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Carner’s book Soft Hard Bodies is available at the Whitney Museum, Printed Matter, St. Marks and variousartistsrecords.com. Recent writings were included in the Autumn 2021 issue of The Philosopher. Carner has curated exhibitions including Dread in the Eyes, Midtown and A Place in the Sun at EFA, Ghost Chair at Hamiltonian Gallery, A Dead Dog's Eye at Aquarius, If You Were in My Body at Fierman Gallery, Ways to Lighten Up at Splinters & Logs, The Shhh Sound Was Difficult at Louis V ESP, and Leave the Capital and Sound Device at Root Division.
