Sarah Tortora

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

The technological drive to build, construct, toil, or reveal is a sovereign form of sustenance. It is the closest process by which one can begin to assume the qualities of another state of matter or being. This drive is a transformation of the earth by other means, a form of ingestion wrought through the hand, to attune one’s labor to the most essential proclamation possible: I am. The in-between. The rusted hinge. The gap in the sidewalk that swallows your shoe. The shedding of concrete from decaying plywood. The stutter between words. Faultlines. Crossroads. The sinew that connects these things, through uncanny geometry, at human scale and OSHA standard. The camouflage of no commitment, whose function is to publicly declare the camouflage sheathing everything else. The art object that plays well with others characterizes the dilemma of a proud impostor. I create sculptural works that mime conventions of canonical sculpture, urban infrastructure, and museological display. These hand-constructed amalgams operate parallel to language and elude classification, perpetually oscillating between relationality and mis-identification. My work frequently incorporates the imagistic potential of sculpture, by acting on an innate bodily alignment with “fronts” and “backs.” These prop-like sculptures become sites for projection: as facsimiles of archetypal objects, impostors of icons, or signs that communicate the structure of their presentation. Atlas (2017) interprets the Classical...

Artwork