Underdonk presents Beca Acosta and Marcy Chevali: Sound & Furiosa. We are in hot times. Acosta and Chevali shape materials with heat. Acosta tungsten arc welds steel into sexualized limbs, studded with pencils and stiletto heels. Chevali constructs nets – a stand-in for safety or entrapment – out of flame-worked glass, wire and yarn, that swell and into biomorphic forms.
This marriage of glass and steel is frequently pushed into the predictable skyscraper or high-end dinner and glassware sold in the museum store. Both artists reconfigure these elements into works that form a delicate landscape where action supersedes words. Chevali’s glass nets, suspended by thin wires, seemingly risk smashing onto the floor but are buoyed by the lightness of their fabrication. Acosta’s steel toes and sharp heels, rooted or airborne, mix desire with weaponry.
Their objects possess tension and agency: wires, heels and string keep them in motion while simultaneously holding them in place. Their surfaces reflect the light, the movement in the room, the change of light through the windows. It is a landscape of action.
