Cut, Weld and Build: Process in Works by Chakaia Booker

Exhbitions 2010: Contempoary View Series

New Jersey-born Chakaia Booker is a renowned abstract artist known for her monumental sculptures made of an unconventional artistic material: rubber tires.  Whether composed of swooping tendrils of hanging rubber, layered sharp shards of steel belted tires or tightly tailored works that take on the shape of their underlying steel armatures, Booker's dynamic works are visually and conceptually rich in meaning.  Building on the inherent associations of rubber to themes of industrialization, urban blight, suburban sprawl and environmental pollution and the physical properties of her chosen material, Booker's works dialogue with the history of abstraction, address potent socio-political and humanistic concerns, and find recycled purpose and beauty in refuse.