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Joel Morrison

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b. 1976, USA

The LA-based artist Joel Morrison has earned international acclaim for his highly polished composite sculptures cast in stainless steel. Classical busts adorned with a forest of anvils, a cheekily positioned croissant, or other incongruous street objects. A giant weather balloon studded into a shopping cart. A punched-in disco ball in a bear trap. Immediately funny, arresting pieces that draw the viewer in, inviting a raft of association and meaning.

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'You have to laugh it off first, before you can have a serious conversation,' Morrison says, inviting us to look again. The weather balloon is in fact the sort that carries information about atmospheric pressure back to earth; the shopping cart a symbol of the disenfranchised, an LA homeless person pushing their belongings by the side of the road.

High and low; street and science; the future and the present. All these ideas suggested and explored in one work. But Morrison isn't forcing the point–he invites the viewer to draw their own conclusion, to enjoy the work on whichever level they land at. Just as Morrison explores concepts of high and low art, his own production methods contain that same dichotomy. Morrison came to the idea of stainless steel out of a fascination with a certain 1960s west coast aesthetic–a movement known as Light and Space–and wanted to explore the idea of reflective surfaces in his work.

Looking around him in downtown LA, the shiniest of the shiny were the polished-up car bumpers and tyre rims. And it was via the car industry there he found the expertise to cast his works into steel, in an industrial foundry. He works in close partnership with a team of industrial craftsmen who polish metal in body shops and factories–far from the usual art-school trained apprentices in some Koons-esque atelier. By assembling his collages and putting them through his unique process, that he could turn street objects into Hermès jewellery.

Text courtesy Reflex Amsterdam.

Recent Exhibitions

Contemporary art exhibition, Group Exhibition, All the World's A Stage at Reflex Amsterdam, Netherlands Closed 9 February–2 March 2019 Group Exhibition All the World's A Stage Amsterdam
Contemporary art exhibition, Group Exhibition, In Times of Plenty: The Shape of Things Today at Reflex Amsterdam, Netherlands Closed 7 July–4 September 2018 Group Exhibition In Times of Plenty: The Shape of Things Today Amsterdam
Contemporary art exhibition, Group Exhibition, New Beginnings at Reflex Amsterdam, Netherlands Closed 6 January–17 February 2018 Group Exhibition New Beginnings Amsterdam
Contemporary art exhibition, Joel Morrison, New Works at Reflex Amsterdam, Netherlands Closed 6 May–15 August 2017 Joel Morrison New Works Amsterdam

Recent Artworks

Tortilla Maker by Joel Morrison contemporary artwork sculpture
Joel Morrison Tortilla Maker, 2012 Stainless steel
35.6 x 48.3 x 40.6 cm
Reflex Amsterdam Contact Gallery
Reaganomic Youth (version 2) by Joel Morrison contemporary artwork sculpture
Joel Morrison Reaganomic Youth (version 2), 2012 Stainless steel
72.4 x 45.7 x 57.2 cm
Reflex Amsterdam Contact Gallery
Monte Carlo by Joel Morrison contemporary artwork sculpture
Joel Morrison Monte Carlo, 2017 Stainless steel
81.3 x 71.1 x 61 cm
Reflex Amsterdam Contact Gallery
Yoghurtland Gashuffer (Reagan) by Joel Morrison contemporary artwork sculpture
Joel Morrison Yoghurtland Gashuffer (Reagan), 2017 Stainless steel
84 x 51 x 56 cm
Reflex Amsterdam Contact Gallery
Weather Balloon Trapped in Duchamp by Joel Morrison contemporary artwork sculpture
Joel Morrison Weather Balloon Trapped in Duchamp, 2017 Stainless steel
91.4 x 68.6 x 27.9 cm
Reflex Amsterdam Contact Gallery

Joel Morrison In Ocula Magazine

Joel Morrison Ocula Insight Joel Morrison By Diana d'Arenberg, Hong Kong

Ask [visual artists] to do something truly subversive and they crawl into a corner and start thumb sucking.

Fade out copy.
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Art Basil [sic] Ocula Feature Art Basil [sic] By Diana d'Arenberg, Hong Kong

A week of memorable highs and lows, and at times crashing expectations, kind of like the contemporary art market, really.

Fade out copy.
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Joel Morrison In Publications

Joel Morrison Joel Morrison
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