MARBLE SCULPTURES
Undercurrent (2023)
'Undercurrent’, defined as a current of water below the surface moving in a different direction from any surface current, refers to the dichotomy within Amy Thai’s work as a floral-artist and sculptor. ‘Undercurrent’ presents a group of medium-sized sculptures made of marble, which capture the organic forms as they can be observed in Venice, a city that is deeply engaged with the powerful force of nature. The heavy marble blocks that originate in the mountains of Carrara, have been brought to Venice and released into fleeting shapes, inspired by the lightness and sound of the surrounding water. In this process, Amy’s ‘undercurrent’ emerges and takes shape within the marble, a powerful and strong material, which is able to withstand her intensity.
Exhibited Work:
Three marble sculptures, up to 30 cm high and up to 50 cm wide, each made of two elements.
REPRESENTED BY LAPIS LAZULI ARTE
About the Group Exhibition
The group exhibition follows an artist-in-residence program for which the five emerging artists were selected from around the world, to prepare a visual account of Venice based on first-hand experience. Venice forms the guiding theme of the 'Water Diaries', the artistic creations that were directly inspired by the city, bringing together paintings, sculptures, works on paper, textiles and installations.
Address: SPUMA (Space for the Arts)
Fondamenta S. Biagio, 800/R, 30133 Venezia VE, Italy
Open: 18/04/2024 - 24/11/2024, 2.30-6.30pm, Closed in August.
"Each work is composed of two organically shaped, petal, wave or coral-like-forms arranged on a plinth with moveable mounts. They are deliberately constructed so as to allow each form to be rotated in relation and response to its pair, perhaps a visualisation of a current and its undercurrent, these works are fixed and yet ever changing, offering a different view or interpretation with each turn." - Jennifer Sliwka
Jennifer Sliwka is the Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum and Professorial Fellow, Balliol College at the University of Oxford.
The complete essay can be found in the catalogue ‘H2O Venezia - Water Diaries’ which is available in La Biennale bookstore and Electa online platform.
“… The beauty of Amy Thai’s work lies precisely in the truthfulness of her relationship with the materials she uses. She chooses the block in the quarry, as sculptors have done for time immemorial. She then feels the marble’s hardness in her very muscles and bones through the tool’s response, crystalline and rigid, upon each strike. Like so many questions put forth to the material, eliciting so many incisive responses. (…) A sculptor who loves and understands the material can choose to be guided by it, and renounce imposing his own will upon it. This is what we sense in these sculptures, which simultaneously express possibilities and limits. And, perhaps, not so much a dialogue as an intense relationship, in which silence, discretion and non-doing have a true place. (…) The fact that these sculptures are assembled to compose a new form, the one that is offered to our eyes, imbues them with a transitory, fleeting character. Despite their material, these sculptures are fragile, and their very mobility seems to place them in constant danger. Because movement is life which also encompasses its end. Marble, pulled from the bed where it lay for thousands of years, has regained a primitive life. It has metamorphosed into something undefined yet resolutely organic, with forms that are uncertain and precise at the same time. And it can move, not only in the light that caresses or grazes it, but like seaweed in the current, to the rhythm of its environment. Times flow and overlap. Unfathomable geological time, at the bottom of the ocean and in the bowels of the earth. The time of slow artistic creation. The transient and lasting time of our contemplation." - Philippe Malgouyres
Philippe Malgouyres is the Chief Curator of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Musée du Louvre.
The complete essay and original in French can be found in the catalogue ‘H2O Venezia - Water Diaries’ which is available in La Biennale bookstore and Electa online platform.
UNDERCURRENT I
UNDERCURRENT I
UNDERCURRENT I
UNDERCURRENT II
UNDERCURRENT II
UNDERCURRENT II
UNDERCURRENT III
UNDERCURRENT III
UNDERCURRENT IV
UNDERCURRENT IV
UNDERCURRENT V
UNDERCURRENT V
For more information, commissions, interviews and other enquiries, please contact: info@amythai.art