Sculpture is my first love and throughout the past 25 years I have developed my own aesthetic language, exploring a dialogue between the simple and the powerful. The forms are reflective of natural and potent geological events. There is also an overall simplicity to the sculptures however, one which is latent with microcosms of interest.
Rorschach's Dilemma
Silent Sentinel
A Conversation in the Tulip Garden I & II
Strutting
Carved Column I
Arum
Alone in the Cattail Reeds
A Gathering of Gladiolas I
A Gathering of Gladiolas II
A Gathering of Gladiolas III
Walking in the Amaryllis II
Carved Column X
In the Key of C
Equipose
Terra
Charcoal
Dream Date
Division
Athena I
Opulent Vessel I
NK Series
Chalk Bone
KRISTAN MARVELL.
Kristan Marvell’s sculptures derive from a technique, which he developed and has worked with over the last twenty years, that he calls spontaneous carving. His bronze sculptures begin as monolithic chunks of Styrofoam. As a stone carver has marble, Marvell has Styrofoam. The sculptures evolve as Marvell pulls and manipulates large hot wires through massive blocks of Styrofoam. This process allows for the improvisational removal of material and produces a unique visual vocabulary. Also, Styrofoam, a material devoid of sensuality, an industrial emblem, is in a sense corrected and made sensual as it progresses towards its transformation into bronze.
Through this visual vocabulary Marvell explores the confrontation between the natural, the organic, and man’s manipulation and reconstruction of the world.
On the most obvious level, the natural landscape is used as a point of inspiration, a visual ode to the raw power of its geological beauty. The work acknowledges and utilizes nature’s ability to elicit emotional transcendence. However, the sculptures are not replicas of natural formations. As a sculptor, Marvell, is interested in thematic or formalist concepts such as the relationship between mass and density, or volume and spatial balance. He likes the enigma of creating sculptures where mass is levitated in unusual ways, where unknowing fragility is able to bear great weight. By way of modernist formal concerns the work references the concept of man’s transformation of nature through the intellectual event of manipulation.
As the eye wanders the sculptural planes, there is a sparseness, a focused control of surface and texture, in which the hand of the artist is evident. In that organization of space, a thoughtful and heart felt integrity emerges, imbuing the sculptures with emotion and grace, reaffirming the power of the object.
Nicholette Kominos
