MARIANNE LOVINK:
HANGING GARDEN

2003

Hanging Garden is part of a new body of work that has evolved through experiments with a thermoplastic product originally developed by the medical industry for orthopedic applications. This material is light, strong, and versatile and allows me to work directly to hand-form multiple elements that combine to create evocative large-scale installations that evoke our microscopic world and provide a sensory virtual tour of the primordial. As a sculptor, my work has centered on exploring the juncture between art and science: a place where the imagined meets the real – or the conscious meets the subconscious. I am particularly interested in creating imaginary hybrids – ambiguous new versions or mutations of the “natural” that are both unpredictable and unsettling. This ambiguity of form, gives rise to conflicted feelings of curiosity and alarm by highlighting the duality of nature’s allure and potential threat, and allows me to explore our inherent distrust of the unknown, our perceptions of mutability, and our perceived vulnerability in the face of genetic experimentation. This work also continues to explore issues of beauty – its ability to act as a lure to seduce and subvert and thus tap into the desires and fears of our subconscious. By exploring our inherent distrust of the unknown, our perceptions of mutability, and our perceived vulnerability in the face of genetic experimentation, I hope to highlight the paradox of nature’s allure and potential threat and thereby provoke and intrigue the viewer. 
The Hanging Garden series harnesses light and shadow to create dreamlike environments of other -worldly forms, while referencing deep-sea flora, microscopic cellular organisms, and the sustaining system of veins, nerves, vessels, and roots that support life. I am currently in the process of augmenting these environments by incorporating sprung steel wire to give added sculptural form and definition to each element. The latest addition to the Hanging Garden series is a vast floating “carpet” of hybrid forms that hang just above the viewer’s head, which aims to create a sensation of being submerged and elicit a physical and psychological response from the viewer.