ANDRA URSUTA: ALPS [2016]

New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2016 | Paperback, 117–120 pages | 184 × 240 mm

Born in Romania and based in New York since the late 1990s, Andra Ursuța is known for her darkly poetic sculptures that blend parody, blasphemy and art historical homage with a raw, anarchic sensibility. Her work merges fragility and aggression, humour and despair, resulting in forms that feel both ancient and futuristic.

This richly illustrated exhibition catalogue accompanies Andra Ursuța: Alps, the debut of the artist’s ambitious sculptural series of the same name, presented on the fourth floor of the New Museum in 2016. Combining formal innovation with sharp social commentary, Ursuța confronts the vulnerability of the human body through surreal, often grotesque forms rooted in her upbringing - from occult folk traditions to nationalist propaganda.

Alps (2016) is a monumental sculptural environment composed of jagged, crystalline peaks that unsettle romantic notions of landscape and interrogate the politics of borders. The installation is presented alongside her ghostly 2015 series Whites and other recent figurative sculptures. Together, they form a haunting and visceral body of work that distorts monumentality into something corporeal and uncanny.

The catalogue features critical essays by curator Natalie Bell, an intimate interview between the artist and Massimiliano Gioni and a provocatively playful text by Maurizio Cattelan. Rich with studio insight and illustrated with installation views, studio shots and detail photography, this scarce volume offers an in-depth look at a practice that explores the myth of endurance - whether cultural, physical, or emotional - through a visual language of ancient symbolism, homespun aesthetics and dystopian critique.

Perfect for readers interested in: radical sculpture, feminist art, post-Soviet narratives, contemporary Eastern European artists or the grotesque made sublime.

Excellent - as new - condition: Unread copy, internally pristine - clean, crisp and tightly bound. Just a hint of surface and edge wear to dust jacket from handling and storage.