Privileging imperfection, absurdity, and hand labor over the sterile perfection of mass-produced products, Carolyn Salas makes awkwardly beautiful sculptures, installations, and works on paper through which she comments on contemporary life. “In a culture obsessed with mass production and disposability, my work is a conduit of my opposition to this standard,” she explains. Working with an assortment of materials, she has cast concrete, plaster, and fiberglass into abstract and representational forms, mixed with found objects; crafted installations out of dyed and shredded canvases and lengths of gold platted chain; and transformed collaged paper and shells into goofy faces. In all of her work, Salas disarms viewers through such unexpected combinations and uses of materials, highlighting what, in her words, gets lost in the scrum of everyday life: “the imperfections and human attributes of burdens, failures, and achievements.”
b. 1975 in Hollywood, California, USA
Lives and Works in Brooklyn, New York, USA
EDUCATION
2005 CUNY Hunter College, New York, M.F.A.
2004 Glassgow School of Art, Fine Arts, Scotland, U.K
1999 College of Santa Fe, (Honors), Santa Fe, New Mexico, B.F.A.
1998 New York Arts Exchange Program/College of Santa Fe, New Mexico
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2021 Mrs., Maspeth, NY
2019 NADA Miami - Special Projects, Mrs., Miami, FLY
2018 Full Body, with Meghan Brady, Mrs., Maspeth, NY
Hunter College Alumni Show, Curated by Patrick Mohundro and Lin Sophia Ma, New York, NY
2016 Behind The Sun, Pàramo Gallery, Guadalajara, Mexico
2015 Carolyn Salas & Jordan Kasey, Phoebe Gallery, Baltimore, MD
See Thru, Evergold Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Carolyn Salas, Koenig & Clinton, New York, NY
2013 Hang Up, Dodge Gallery, New York, NY
Project Space, Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL
Carolyn Salas, Time Equities, Inc. Art-in-Buildings Program, curated by Jennie Lamensdorf, New York, NY
Cut Outs, with Jenny Brillhart, Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL
2009 Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself, Gallerie Nordine Zidoun, Luxembourg
2008 Feast of Burden, with Adam Parker Smith, Silly Thing Gallery, Hong Kong
2007 Against Stone and Sea, Priska Juschka Gallery, New York, NY