Petah Coyne: Vermilion Fog

New York and Milan: Galerie Lelong; Charta, 2008. Pictorial boards, 83 pages, colour illustrations; 25 cm. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Galerie Lelong, New York, October 24 to December 6, 2008. Firm binding, clean inside copy. "A sculpture by Petah Coyne might include a range of unconventional materials such as chicken wire, wax, sand, silk flowers, pearl-headed hatpins, candles, taxidermy animals, black velvet, feathers and ribbons. In the artist's hands, these disparate items are transformed into voluminous, complex organic forms that seem to either emerge from below or descend from above. At times suggestive of sprawling, all-but-sentient chandeliers, the works are rich with narrative metaphor and evoke a love of domestic materials, fairy tale arcana and biomorphic proliferation. 'I love it when they look past maintenance,' Coyne has said of her sculptures, 'like a plant on somebody's porch that's kind of lost its mind.' From her early hanging black sand sculptures to her latest works in wax and silk Coyne's otherwordly structures are simultaneously fragile and imposing, delicate yet exquisitely untamable." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine. 8vo. Collectible.