Lynn Aldrich

Lynn Aldrich makes sculptures, wall constructions, and installations using a variety of ordinary, mass-produced objects and materials. Signature works assembled from garden hoses, rain downspouts, and plastic sponges are clear referents to the world of everyday consumption and utility. Other series explore the possibilities of accumulated craft materials and fabrics, inkpads and office supplies, drywall and plastic panels. Concerned with formal decision-making, color choices, and shifts in scale, she is inspired by the simplicity and directness of Minimalism, but with a complex layering of metaphors.

Her work is a transformative exercise in perceptual transfiguration, a literal conversion of the mundane into unusual entities and unfamiliar encounters. Though often filled with humor and play, many pieces have an undeniable subtext of ecological concern, accompanied by a surprising spiritual longing. Like totemic reminders of our excessive consumption, her sculptures usually mimic phenomena in nature through artificial means; water and waves, flora and fauna, skies and galaxies are all strangely rendered in plastic, vinyl, fake fur or foam. This visual and conceptual tension between the natural and synthetic reminds us of the precarious condition of the human-made world and of our own temporality.