Kaari Upson

BODHIDHARMA

2014
urethane and pigment
72 x 31 x 26 inches

The recent cast sculptures by LA artist Kaari Upson hang slack against gallery walls and floors, puckered, wrinkled, and empty. Upson makes molds and casts of couches, chairs, and discarded mattresses, creating a final product that has removed the rigid structure and padding of the furniture and left only the empty shell in a material reminiscent of skin. Bodhidharma hints that its origins may be as an overstuffed chair, but Upson focuses on the seams and nooks that swell out in the urethane piece, and not its domestic connotations. Upson gained enormous acclaim for her previous series The Larry Project, a body of work examining obsession and imagination through the real and fictional identity of “Larry,” the owner of items she recovered from a burned house in 2005 and incorporated into her work.

© kaari upson