Hans Bellmer, John Chamberlin, Gego, and Ruth Vollmer

These are the drawings, photographs and sculptures of Hans Bellmer. I chose these images in particular because they most closely relate to the work that I just finished with the mattresses. 

Bellmar's drawings often depict women or womanly figures bound, ensnared or contorted in different forms and shapes because of some constricting line. Some figures seem to be bound and faced away from the viewer, seeming more helpless then the action that keeps them static. 

 The wrapping of the legs and torso here do not show the same violence that comes to mind with words like bound or constricted. The denotation of these words carry through the materialty.

Hans Bellmar is mostly know for the sculptures, photos and intervention type of installations he created using dolls that have been tied, reconstructed or adapted to specific shapes or gestures. He created forms that seem to be bulging out of their restraints. His sculptures and images remind me of the way meat might be tied with twine.

With one of my own sculptures, I did something similar by using elastic band to control and wrap a mattress foam pad. The foam is porous and can be depressed making the form looks as though it is growing like yeast in bread, or bulging like flesh or fat escaping from a string.

 

I was originally inspired with the mattresses after looking at John Chamberlin's smashed cars and wrapped foam sculptures. Chamberlin works in this readymade fashion that implies a heavy process that will completely transform the object, space, or material. 

Another Artist that uses line to create or shape a space to a specific form is Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt). Here beautiful line installations ensnare her viewers into a visually perspective where you must rely more on your other senses than your vision to navigate through the space. I can only imagine  how this would be so visually jarring. I relate her work to another artist, Ruth Vollmer, who CAPTURES the space crated through the networks and wrappings of forms.

Gego with one of her unidentified sculptures