Alexis Granwell

Alexis Granwell’s background in print and paper-making imbues her sculpture with a unique material sensibility. Adhering handmade paper to papier-mâché and wire armatures, Granwell creates forms that suggest eroded bodies, bodily fragments, and biomorphic shapes—a fusion of Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, and classical sculpture by way of the entropy of millenia. Accentuating the forlorn, Granwell uses a variety of coloring techniques (spraying, spilling and brushing) to suggest lichen encrustation and erosion. Granwell’s organic forms are radically juxtaposed with the pristine, rectilinear, monochrome pedestals of wood or concrete block on which they’re installed. Granwell’s attention to the pedestal as a sculptural object equal in weight to the works that lie on top places her in the company of recent contemporary sculptors (Matthew Monahan, Huma Bhaba, Thomas Houseago, and Lisa Lipinski) who creatively explore the aesthetic function of the base (all indebted to Brancusi). Like the artists mentioned above, Granwell’s work departs from the all-encompassing aspirations of installation art that gained traction over the last 30 years and instead returns sculpture to a discrete entity occupying a more circumscribed notion of space. In dialogue with Adam Lovitz’s paintings that conjure the surfaces of ancient rocks and minerals, perhaps Granwell’s biomorphs are not ruins after all, but scholar stones placed respectfully on oddly yet carefully crafted bases for deep contemplation. In any regard, Granwell’s evocation of entropy through sculptural form resonates with Lovitz’s paintings that explore sedimentation and the passage of time, and the geometry of Granwell’s pedestals pair well with Hoffmann’s geometric abstract paintings.

Granwell has had solo shows at venues throughout the United States and abroad. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at a range of venues such as International Print Center, Moore College of Art and Design, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, the Print Studio, and Hemphill Fine Arts,  among others. She has received grants from the Independence Foundation and the Printmakers Open Forum, and has had residencies at AS220, Providence, RI; Ragdale Artist Residency, Lake Forest, IL; and Europos Parkas Artist Residency, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Courtesy of Fleisher/Ollman Gallery