Burnaway

Among the more memorable works in “M4: Second Severn Crossing,” MINT Gallery’s show at Hathaway Contemporary, are Victoria Dugger‘s creepy-in-a-good way biomorphic sculptures. The 11 artists in the juried exhibition, on view through June 4, were selected from over 300 submissions by Art Papers editor and artistic director Victoria Camblin.
Dugger earned her BFA from Columbus State University in 2016. Last year, her work was included in the “Nasty Women Exhibition” at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York, and she won the $10,000 first place prize in the exhibition “(RE) Invention – VSA Emerging Young Artists Competition” at the John F. Center for The Performing Arts, Washington D.C. She has said that her work “contemplates the phenomena of beauty and the grotesque … through the heavy distortion of the human body,” which is evident in forms that are recognizable yet foreign, grotesque but not gruesome. Reminiscent of sculptures by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere and early Senga Nengudi, they are grounded in the body yet never offer a resolved, whole form, which is part of their allure.

Victoria Dugger, Soft Machine Zero, 2015; encaustic and nylon, DV.