With Peelings, Gad presents a series of new site-specific installations consisting of ceramic forms suspended in the landscape. In late winter, Gad collected the shedding skins of maple, pine, birch and ash trees from the thawing ground and brushed them with layer upon layer of ceramic slip until a thick clay crust built up around them. When they were kiln fired, the woody interior burned away and the forms shrank and hardened into shells—sometimes splitting open to reveal the texture of the bark. Placed on existing structures and trees, or held aloft by sinuous wire armatures, each component is in conversation with its counterparts, and the artist’s source material within the surrounding woods.
Linnéa Gad (b. Stockholm, 1990) is a Hudson Valley based visual artist who works in sculpture, painting, performance, and writing. Peelings is curated by Alyson Baker and organized in partnership with River Valley Arts Collective. Please click here to reserve your spot for a guided tour (RSVP required).
Photos by David Schulze, courtesy River Valley Arts Collective.