Teresa Solar’s art alludes to material entities in states of transformation. Suspended between the biological and the industrially produced, the tangible and the mythical, her works of sculpture, drawing, and video present a hybrid world inflected by fiction and storytelling, natural history, ecology, and anatomy. Within her sculptural practice, large-scale installations and smaller objects made from contrasting materials frequently appear in families of sister sculptures. For Solar, clay, in particular, takes on consequential meaning: as a primordial geological substance and constituent part of the built environment, it is naturally suffused with stories of self-protection, isolation, and states of transformation. Many of Solar’s recent projects explore these concerns through sculptures that take on zoomorphic shapes or resemble bodily appendages. Solar’s new series Tunnel Boring Machine (2022), comprises three large sculptures inspired by animals and prehistoric life forms reminiscent of fish gills, dolphin fins, beaks, blades, and oars. Treated with a high polish finish, these works speak to a conception of abstracted time: they are inventions of fiction and simulation, compositions of a long hidden earthly skin.
Madeline Weisburg
