When I picture the animals of the underworld, I don’t see them as blackened, vicious creatures – I visualize them looking like Christy Langer‘s sculptures: deathly pale, weepy, red-rimmed eyes, still suffering the blows that put them there. Wittingly or not, Langer’s work looks like the animals that live in the dead forest of Hades – animals that never see light and are more afraid of life than they are interested in attacking it. Langer moved from Victoria, BC to a small Northern Canadian town as a child, and many of her works are based in memories of the hunted animals she encountered there. In her Q&A with My Love For You, she recalls seeing what she assumed at first was a sleeping deer in the back of a pickup, which upon closer inspection was the carcass of slaughtered game – an image that lives with her to this day. Many of her subjects appear wounded, both outwardly and in, and evoke a haunting sadness and inner torture. Much of what is striking in Langer’s work is it’s deceivingly simple palette, which emphasizes the emotions she captures in the poses of the animals. She showed in April alongside another favorite of mine, Kris Kuksi, at the Shooting Gallery at SF, and I can see how their work meshes well together; her simplicity and his complexity complement each other well. After the jump, check out more of Christy Langer’s sculpture from the collection she showed at the Shooting Gallery…
IMAGES VIA Shooting Gallery, Cutts Gallery & My Love For You
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