Abstraction and figuration combine with startling, dynamic results in Carmen Egea’s lush, elegant sculptures. The self-taught Madrid-based artist organizes her works by dualities, and also notes the influences of her iron-sculpting father and ikebana expert mother, and her interests in sculptors like Jean Arp and Louise Bourgeois. She negotiates these varied concerns in striking, expressive faces and delicate nudes of rough-hewn bronze, and sleek, leaping abstract forms, yet maintains an incredible force of vision. A bright orange aerodynamic aluminum abstraction, a long-backed female figure, and unwieldy terracotta loops are all unmistakably the work of the same hands and eyes.
Egea’s ability to keep all these elements and precedents in a perpetually shifting but elegantly choreographed balance means her sensitive work is unpredictable yet never unsettling. Applying her aesthetic to different materials and shapes, she harmonizes the precise, slender lines of ikebana and minimalism with the more expressive, saturated and generous tones and proportions of Expressionist sculpture. The smooth, clean forms she crafts burst with vitality.