Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels
a DEFECT // to DEFECT

“How do we learn to change for a future we can’t imagine?” asks the Tennessee-born sculptor as she prepares for her first New York solo show at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, opening December 8, 2016. An avid reader of magical realism, Bothwell Fels makes works that sits somewhere between folklore and sci-fi, an exploration of the here-now, never was, and maybe-could-be.

Fascinated with ruptures and growths, Bothwell Fels approaches sites-of-change both in body and land. Where dissected illustrations of erupting volcanoes and lactating breasts look very similar, by her hands the wood and plaster morphs into a new expression of such swellings. She turns to raw, physical materials to consider geological shifts in tangent with the places we make inside ourselves for growth.