“Art should be beautiful, sensual, and transcendental,” says sculptor, Violet Dennison, paraphrasing John McCracken and providing insight into the directives for her newest sculptural work. Dennison is an emerging talent fresh out of NYU’s Steinhardt School. We recently discussed her raw, multiverse sculpture. In which, the artist offers an exciting and refreshing counterpoint to the trending ‘detritus movement’ taking her work further than mere groovy dyes and grainy façades. Instead, the impetus behind Dennison’s style comes from disco, sensuality, California car culture, and a suspicious yearn for utopian escapism.

The collection of works in Dennison’s Gowanus studio range in materials, from cement, plaster, burlap, granite, to wood, and measure from four to seven feet. Stylistically, they push at the boundaries of 60’s minimalism, entering into the viewer’s spatial field by modes of leaning, hanging, or existing as lone vertical structures.

Heavy fabrication and a dematerialized aesthetic are juxtaposed in Dennison’s work through her use of raw material and visual trickery. Materials are manipulated and meticulously re-invented, reaching a visual regression to a seemingly more organic state. Coated in dulcet tones of light pinks, blues, and pale greens, her palimpsest process delivers seesawing conclusiveness on their physical and visceral nature. “Is what’s in front of me heavy and cold or in fact light and sensual?” He or she must decide whether or not to trust his or her initial perception. 

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