Description
Scott Richards Contemporary Art is proud to present the premiere exhibition of works by Argentinean sculptor, Martin Di Girolamo. Entitled GIRLS, the exhibition features figurative sculptures of molded epoxy representing an array of seductive, young women.Martin Di Girolamo began his artistic career by painting large size figurative paintings of amazing realistic detail. Later on, driven by his obsession with the female form, he initiated his own rendition of the Pygmalion/Galatea myth and felt compelled to give shape to two-dimensional imagery. While his creative process could aptly be described as highly detailed pre-production work in creating every man’s fantasy muse, the artist innovatively defies traditional methods of working from live models and carefully sculpts his subject from a multitude of photographs.
With perfect bodies, provocative smiles and sexy clothes, his doll-like GIRLS are playful, candy colored, anatomically correct sculptures, around 4 feet high, standing goddess-like on pedestals at eye-level with the viewer. Invoking our curiosity, these clone-like temptresses seem to ooze seductive girl-power, yet put us on edge with their direct, confrontational stare. Their charms give way to a new mythology of sexuality and eroticism as Di Girolamo cleverly combines the kitsch eroticism of Pop Art with hyper-realistic detail and anime-like form, but their plastic nature reveals a disquieting look at the standards of 21st Century beauty, addressing body image issues such as plastic surgery and anorexia while drawing upon the pervasive presence of sex in advertising and an universal fascination with pornography.
Martin Di Girolamo was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he currently lives and works. He studied Art at the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredon in Buenos Aires, and is the recipient of the prestigious Premio Konex (2002), and the Kuitca Grant for young artists (1994). With an ever-growing international audience, his sculptures are already famous throughout Latin America and have been exhibited in numerous private collections as well as at the Fine Arts National Museum and the Museo Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Arco Madrid, Madrid, Spain, and the Dakar Bienalle, Dakar, Senegal. A catalogue of the exhibition at Scott Richards Contemporary Art is forthcoming.
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