Emil Alzamora

Alzamora’s practice explores the narrative influence possible through elastic and surreally warped renditions of the human form. Here utilising Gypsum followed by bronze and working at a remarkable life-size scale, ‘Mascochist’ balances realistic depiction with a wildly contorted and re-proportioned figure, hands and feet readily swapped to disorientate and disaffect the viewer. The stress position is offset by a calm, reflective expression typical in Alzamora’s figural sculpture, lending the bodily extension an ambiguity that might be as balletic as injurious.

Peruvian artist Alzamora is drawn to warping, distorting or mutating the human figure to pull out significant emotional or biological resonances. ‘Mother & Child’ is from a series of pieces that uses white porcelain and features a similar expression — the form of mother and child, carefully rendered, with the surreal and oddly dark obscuration of the head with flowers, strips of cloth or vines. The subtle accents of pink naturally draw focus in, and a stern or impassive expression peeks through. What might otherwise be elegant or beautiful takes on a more mysterious and complex stance. Alzamora examines the ecstasies and agonies of life through a careful process in which a material’s potential will inform his response — a position as assistant at the Polich Tallix foundry in New York bestowing him with an intimate knowledge of technique.

Curled into a neat spiral, Emil Alzamora’s “Sleeping Shark” is not unlike the artist’s other sculptural work, which often shows human forms twisted into impossible contortions. Here, a hammerhead shark’s flat, protruding head is locked into place by its tail fins. Typically seen as threatening creatures with razor-sharp teeth, sharks sleep only briefly and typically maintain movement during periods of rest. Alzamora has emasculated this notoriously predatory animal by representing it in the unnatural state of inert slumber. “Sleeping Shark” is finished in a silvery-blue glaze that makes it gleam like freshly-polished chrome.

"Spool is one of a series of sculptures made that explore the human figure in a reduced or simplified way, either by encasing or transforming their outer surface or skin. With Spool, the coils emanate from within the head, implying that the coils that wrap the figure originate from within. It is a cocoon of sorts, where the form inside is transforming and growing while protected, though at the same time the protection seems ominous." -Emil Alzamora

Alzamora’s figurative distortions search restlessly for a poetic function that conveys movement, thought and form pragmatically. ‘Ultima Thule’ connotes a passage of time as a physical object — a body warped and stretched symmetrically and seeming to occupy and move between two spaces. Multiple consciousness are captured in taffy-like fluidity. The artist's talent for material developed with his practice at the Polich Tallix foundry in New York, and here the use of porcelain  and a creamy, glossy glaze gives the work a nondescript surface and a full, resolved form.