Christina, 2014. Oil on Resin. 72 x 19 x 14 inches.
Feuerman is thrilled to be exhibiting stateside at KM Fine Art in Chicago because she and her sculptures have been globetrotting.
Recently back, from her immensely successful solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Feuerman’s Harbour City pieces are now moving to the Daejeon Museum of Art in South Korea and then onto another museum show in Seoul. This exhibition will be followed by upcoming October shows in London and Frankfurt.
Feuerman is also creating an outdoor sculpture park with Mana Wynwood Miami for 2015 Art Basel.
Miniature Balance, 2015. Oil on Resin. 18 x 16 x 9 inches.
The latest word from curators at the 2015 Venice Biennale is that the illusionary effect of Feuerman’s two monumental sculptors there is so popular, that stopping people from touching the pieces “seems impossible.” Thus, the sculptures now literally have bodyguards.
Feuerman is excited to introduce her newest swimmer Christina to the Windy City. Hopefully, she won’t need a bodyguard. Next Summer and Miniature Serena will join her on display.
Miniature Serena, 2015. Oil on Resin with Swarovski Crystal. 10 x 17 x 8 inches.
Every Feuerman swimmer has a story: Christina is one of Feuerman’s most spontaneous creations.
The sculptor was drawn to the aesthetics of a bathing suit she saw on her birthday in Iceland and imagined what kind of woman would wear such a bold suit with grace and authority. The one piece suit, swimming cap, and high heels speak to empowered womanhood.
There is no such thing as a trivial detail in a Feuerman sculpture: Christina’s left hand is semi clenched into a fist as she elegantly bathes in the sun.
The radiance of her sun warmed skin and her fist refer to what Feuerman calls, “the posture of power”. Christina is equally feminine and delicate, but powerful and liberated as well.
The one piece suit is a classic look juxtaposed against the contemporary silver high heels. This speaks to the generational evolution of the female form and how women choose to empower/express themselves through fashion.
Next Summer, 2012. Oil on Resin. 39 x 54 x 50 inches.
Christina’s coloring and clothing were especially designed for the KM Fine Art Show. A distinct mark of a ‘Feuerman’ is the sculptor’s unique practice of sculpting and painting all clothing and accessories.
Where others simply use actual clothing, Feuerman prefers hand crafted perfection to mere product. Hyper-reality after all, is in the details.
Miniature Quan, 2014. Oil on Resin. 11 x 11 x 7 inches.
“My Swimmers are peace loving, and sometimes pleasure loving. They are satisfied with life and moreover, they are survivors. My swimmers have their own personalities and tell their own stories.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Carole A. Feuerman | New Works
July 31 – September 15, 2015
Opening Reception with Artist in Attendance: July 31, 5-8pm
KM FINE ARTS | CHICAGO
Chicago, IL (May 19, 2015) - KM Fine Arts is pleased to announce Carole A. Feuerman | New Works, a solo exhibition of new sculptures by the artist, on view from July 31, – September 15, 2015 at the gallery’s Chicago location at 43 East Oak Street, Chicago, IL 60611. The exhibition will feature a selection of both life-size and small-scale works by the artist. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 31, from 6-9pm with the artist in attendance.
Carole Feuerman (b.1945) has received critical acclaim for her hyperrealist sculptures of swimmers and bathers for over forty years. A number of her most iconic images, including Balance, Serena and Miniature Quan will be featured in the exhibition alongside life-size works, Christina and Next Summer. Executed in painted resin with tactile flesh and meticulous detail, Feuerman’s sculptures have a presence that is both contemporary and classical. While it is not uncommon for hyperrealist work to seem cold and unapproachable, Feuerman’s bathers, balanced and calm, are unexpectedly intimate and inviting.
Genuine mink fur is used for the replication of eyelashes and hair, and the details of the tanned skin, fingernails, and bathing suit ripples are painstakingly painted on. These details combined with the perfectly formed water droplets made of clear resin create astonishingly life-like sculptures. A number of swimmers are even dressed with swim caps that are bejeweled with red and crystalline Swarovski Crystals. The artist states that she, “sculpt[s] the human figure so lifelike, the pieces seem to breathe...This can take up to 100 different coats of paint, and glazing and sanding in between coats, to get the finish and luminosity needed. From start to finish, the process of creating a sculpture can take from 6 months to several years.”
In addition to her resin and oil sculptures, Feuerman is also works actively with bronze. Two of her bronze works, Miniature Tree and Miniature Diver will be featured in the exhibition. The body of the diver is arched into a sensuous C-shape and speaks to her understanding of the golden mean: an ancient mathematical equation epitomizing balance and proportion. The bather featured in Miniature Tree is posed with an S-curve, or contrapposto, typical of classic Greek and later Renaissance sculpture.
Feuerman lives and works in New York. She has had six museum retrospectives and her work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 2008 Olympic Fine Arts Exhibition, the Venice Biennale, The State Hermitage, and The Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, to name a few. Among her many honors are 1st-Prize-Best in Show at the Beijing Biennale, the Amelia Peabody Sculpture Award, the Betty Parsons Sculpture Award, and the Medici Award. Her work is in the selected collections of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Forbes Magazine Collection, the Caldic Collection, and Credit Suisse Collection. Selected public collections include Grounds for Sculpture, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Bass Museum and Art-st-Urban.
About Carole A. Feuerman
Carole A. Feuerman is recognized as one of the world’s most renowned hyperrealist sculptors. Her prolific career spans four decades in which she has pioneered new approaches to sculpture. Working in both monumental and life size, she is the only figurative artist to hyperrealistically paint bronze for use in outdoor public art, and the only sculptor to install these sculptures in the water.
While attending the School of Visual Arts in New York, she painted 13 album covers used by Time Warner Records including, but not limited to, The Rolling Stones World Tour Book, Alice Cooper, and Aretha Franklin. She has been honored with six major museum retrospectives to date. Her work has been showcased in numerous exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, the State Hermitage, the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, the Kunstmuseum Ahlen, the Archeological Museum di Fiesole, and the Circulo de Bellas Artes. She won first prize at the Austrian Biennale, the Florence Biennale, the 2008 Olympic Fine Art Exhibition, best in show at the Beijing Biennale, and won the Save The Arts Foundation Award as Museum Choice.
In 2000, she was elected to be a member of the International Woman’s Forum, where preeminent leaders of diverse professional achievement from finance to fine arts come together to make a difference and to take an active, leadership role in matters of importance. In 2013 her sculpture, The General’s Daughter was featured in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.
There are four full-color monographs written about her work: Carole Feuerman Sculpture, both editions published by Hudson Hills Press, La Scultura in Contra la Realta, which is available in multiple languages, and Swimmers, published by The Artist Book Foundation.
About KM Fine Arts
With prominent locations in Chicago on Oak Street and West Hollywood in Los Angeles, KM Fine Arts, directed by curator Ana Hollinger, has been critically acclaimed for its museum-quality exhibitions since 2006. The gallery specializes in American and European artists of early modernism, postwar, and contemporary art—including the movements of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. The gallery program includes works by Georg Baselitz, Norman Bluhm, Fernando Botero, James Brooks, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Michael Goldberg, Hans Hofmann, Robert Indiana, Wolf Kahn, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, along with contemporary artists Eric Fischl, Ramsey Dau, Carole Feuerman, Kim Gottlieb-Walker, Dana Louise Kirkpatrick, Gary Lang, Victor Matthews, Ruth Pastine, Cole Sternberg, Judith Supine, and Bernie Taupin—among others.