Exhibitions

Fahrenheit Madrid presents the sculptures of Shari Mendelson, an American artist based in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Under the title “Bull Riding At Sea”, the exhibition showcases a careful selection of eleven sculptures, representing her broader body of work and artistic universe. Mendelson is deeply inspired by her profound interest in Art History, particularly by cultures from Ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, amongst others. The works speak to Mendelson’s meticulous technique which she has perfected throughout the last decade and a half, creating elegant forms out of mass produced plastic; mostly by repurposing ordinary plastic beverage bottles. Her mixed media technique merges plastic together with glass frit, resin and acrylic polymer, amongst other materials. This process enables Mendelson to simulate materials such as ancient glass, stone, ceramic and terracotta together with their correspondent transparencies, effects and textures, all reminiscent of the Ancient World. At the exhibition “Bull Riding At Sea”, we frequently encounter figures that explore the liminal boundary between the human and the animal bodies, with bulls, Minotaurs and sphinxes. At first glance, these compositions seem to carry the look and charm of ancient archeological finds, directly connecting us with the Ancient world as well as with the world of mythology- where animals are sometimes portrayed as “vehicles” from the natural world to the divine. In fact, it is this interaction that provides Mendelson with a series of formal liberties of he own, visible in all her pieces; reinventing a series of unique shapes and boundaries, together with a formal language of its own. However, the material composition of her pieces radically bring us back to the present, reminding ourselves of the consumerist, hyper productive and mass-produced era in which we live...thus making a simultaneous contrast with the heritage of the past, against the legacy of the present. It can thus be interpreted as an invitation to reflect on the material legacy that our current society will leave for posterity. Hence, though her artworks are endowed with a certain aura of antiquity and solemnity, her sculptures are, by nature, deeply contemporary, not only due to their composition and execution, but due to their concept and inner message.