Statement

I create sculptures that exist at the intersection of geology and technology, engaging vibrant fluorescent colors with polar features that are threatened by climate change like icebergs and glaciers. I am interested in how digital software like Google Earth and Photoshop has changed the way we interact with distant and esoteric places like Antarctica, by increasing visual access and stimulating virtual interaction as a proxy for firsthand physical exploration. After traveling to Antarctica in 2014, I became fascinated by my continued re-living of the trip as mediated through my computer screen. I am also interested in what I consider to be the perceptual ramifications of having grown up using digital design software as a creative output. I was born in 1990 on the cusp of a technological revolution, and the development and proliferation of creative computer software into the domestic sphere massively influenced my spatial-visual development. I apply the saturated, crisp aesthetics of digital technologies like Photoshop to raw and sublime geologic forms, blending the two in an attempt to reveal their intertwined nature. 

I utilize fluorescent pigments and subtle gradients in my work to allude to digital spaces, and am interested in creating sculptures that function as visually jarring digital aberrations within the physical realm. I contrast these fluorescent elements with geologically-derived materials like marble and gypsum, to evoke a sense of grounded physicality in an otherwise intangible digital realm. My interest in geology is manifold: geologic forms are sublime and impressive, massive and permanent compared to the human [or digital] form, and yet actually fluid and permutable on a larger geologic time scale. Geologic thinking offers an alternative to the climatologically destructive anthropocentric viewpoint, asserting the ultimate [im]permanence of us, and of Earth.

Biography

Born in 1990, Devra Freelander currently lives and works in New York. Her sculptures explore the aesthetic and perceptual relationships between digital and geologic spaces. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016, and her BA with honors in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2012. Freelander has exhibited nationally and internationally, at Zoya Tommy Gallery in Houston TX, the New York Design Center, the RISD Museum, the White Gallery in Lakewood CT, and the Fjuk Arts Centre in Iceland. She is a recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and a participant in the 2016-2017 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency. She has traveled to Antarctica and Iceland in pursuit of polar sublimity, and in 2017 will attend the Arctic Circle Residency.

Artist Website
Instagram @devrafreelander