Event
Tamra Seal: Irresistible ForcesPost an Event »
A solo installation of new work by Tamra Seal. Drawing inspiration from such disparate sources as industrial design, film and Tantric tradition, Seal creates abstract sculptures that are both strange and oddly alluring. They operate simultaneously as prop, set, and transformational vehicle, drawing us in and eliciting surprising emotional responses.
Inspired by the films Forbidden Planet and All About Eve, works in this exhibit suggest the otherworldly, vanity and desire. Materials range from polished, fabricated, fluorescent, acrylic rods to an 800-pound rock, tool dipped with fluorescent paint, and appearing as though from another planet. Fur Muff Zoetrope - a veritable one person stage for reveling in status and glamor, symbolized by the white fur muff at its center - evokes a desire to reach out and touch the soft, tactile muff. Smooth, pink, fluorescent tubes surrounding the muff suggest stage lights and the whole piece reads as some kind of weird teleportation device.
Seal is drawn to fluorescent colors for the "inherent light" they emanate, which is at once inviting and self-contained, like the works themselves. While the objects seems to exert an irresistible pull, activating the senses and making us want to touch, explore and even enter, we cannot actually physically engage with them. Instead, they initiate a heightened state of awareness, awakening some dimly remembered place within our psyche and provoking our reflections on the experience.
Tamra Seal received her MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. She was recently selected by Berkeley Art Museum curator, Dena Beard, for the 2014 Bay Area Currents exhibition at Pro Arts Gallery. Later this year, she will have shows at Studio 110 Projects and Ever Gold Gallery.