Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

John Bisbee Exclusively Manipulates Nails in Sculptures

John Bisbee, who welds and manipulates 12-inch spikes, has always operated under one mantra: "Only nails, always different." In recent pieces, his diverse output bends the nails into an enormous snake, a tree, and more abstract forms. Not only are the subjects depicted varying wildly, but the style in which the nails comprise them: sometimes rigid and geometric, elsewhere chaotic.

John Bisbee, who welds and manipulates 12-inch spikes, has always operated under one mantra: “Only nails, always different.” In recent pieces, his diverse output bends the nails into an enormous snake, a tree, and more abstract forms. Not only are the subjects depicted varying wildly, but the style in which the nails comprise them: sometimes rigid and geometric, elsewhere chaotic.


“In his new works, Bisbee reconfigures this relationship through diminishing scale, collage, line and narrative,” a recent statement says. “There is now an immediacy to the notion of mutation as a dominant element. His work always is rooted in the materiality of nails and common spikes, but in this new body of work the steel is bent to create vivid and elegant abstractions such as ‘Infinity Pool’ and ‘Common Mirage.’”

See more works from the artist’s below.


Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
The personal work of Brooklyn-born sculptor Dave Cortes is forged from varying types of woods and precious metals. These pieces, whether a dramatic face distorted from brute force or a quieter, grotesque mediation, “represent an encapsulated moment of inspiration,” Cortes says. The artist has created commercial work for DC Comics, Sideshow Toys, Toy Biz, and MacFarlane Toys.
Before the cyanotype was popularized by artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Derges and Florian Neusüss in the 1960s, it was used by architects, astronomers and botanists. It is therefore fitting that contemporary artist Tasha Lewis appropriates this method of camera-less photography to make anthropological sculptures. To transform her two-dimensional cyanotypes into three-dimensional objects, Lewis uses mixed-media paper, tape, wood, and wire to build the forms of human portraits, birds in flight and thawing animals, among other shapes and characters. She then uses a photochemical reduction process to print on cloth, which she hand-sews and patchworks together. The artist refers to this outer layer as the "skin" of her sculptures.
Theo Mercier is a young, French artist currently based in Mexico City. Working primarily in sculpture and photography, he often inventively incorporates found objects into his work. He arranges commonplace items in ways that can be grotesque or sexual, playing with the tension between alluring colors and textures and off-putting content.
In Debbie Lawson’s ghostly rug sculptures, animal heads emerge from domestic patterns. In some pieces, flora and fauna extend from the unlikely objects. Yet, in her full body representations of bears, the work is at its most powerful and captivating. The intricate patterns of the fabrics add to the contours of the beasts.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List