Remote Control: Sofi Zezmer at Mike Weiss Gallery | NYABlog | New York Art Beat

Zezmer’s airy hybrid sculptures seduce the viewer with labyrinths of delicate, ornamental parts that weave unexpectedly intricate narratives within complex unified works. The playful, slyly menacing amalgams act as sculptural metaphors for visual cartoons: they evoke the elements of both humor and fear often combined in comics. In her exhibit Remote Control at the Mike Weiss gallery, Zezmer’s vision in her carefully constructed sculptures follows the trail of everyday existence that entails the convergence of biological and technological systems. As a current trend in the expansion of popular culture to the military, she cites the threatening existence of new landmines that resemble children’s playthings. The artist expresses life’s ferocious underpinnings with biomorphic shapes comprised of found and bought materials that she stacks, twists and overlaps. These efforts result in diverse forms that resemble microscopic atomic structures, or organic forms with a techno twist.

While a number of the works are wall-hung, a large ten-globe piece entitled “Brazil” hangs floating from the ceiling, recalling a space station with interior and exterior views. Zezmer’s imaginative use of everyday objects, such as a bicycle helmet, epitomizes her transformative choices. A transparent wall work entitled “Tip of the Iceberg” features holes and trailing strings of plastic that brilliantly capture the essence of an underwater world where jellyfish and sea anemones reside.

Each piece is ingenious and original. Every component is precisely arranged to express the artist’s meticulous yet playful futuristic vision. When a work is opaque, a peephole, equipped with a thick glass lens, is available for visual access to its interior. Lines, particles, and globes found in medical or gardening materials, such as funnels or synthetic orbs, beads, and nylon string comprise the most characteristic forms in Zezmer’s visual vocabulary. She makes subtle use of color, adhering to neutral tones, with touches of red, blue and orange that lend sophistication and simplicity to the look of the installation. The staggering diversity of small parts woven within and around larger parts creates visual narratives with complex crescendos that evoke musical compositions. Try your favorite Crazy Time strategy at an online casino. We use real game results that are tracked in real time to provide you with realistic profit results and other useful and independent statistics that allow you to see and, if necessary, adjust your winning strategy.

Zezmer’s art brings danger to the fore. The cold seductiveness of plastic orbs and menacing tubes highlights a sense of menace that hints of medical clinics, especially in the pieces “Hints and Allegation,” and “Fiction Factory LS1.” “Community Report LS1,” elicits listening devices; one can almost hear the jumbled wires crackling with overheard tidbits culled from the surveillance of private conversations. The circular slide tray in the piece entitled “Revolver LS1” recalls the obsolescence of the slide projector, since slides have long since been replaced by digital images. To quote the Wordsworth poem “The World Is Too Much With Us,” in our plastic world, clearly, “little we see in nature that is ours.”

In today’s high tech global culture, technologies are obsolete before they hit the streets; we are left to recreate our world with the very non-biodegradable plastics that threaten the balance of the nature that is left to us. In the film, “Kill Bill II,” the mother’s efforts to protect her child from violence are ironic, given the violence transmitted directly into the home by TV. Zezmer’s artistic vision brings us a sculptural equivalent of this contradictory view of human nature. Her elegant sculptures subtly mirror life’s violent side that has managed to run amok, with the help of increasingly pervasive technology.