Alma Allen (artist)

Work

Carved from foraged wood and stone or cast in bronze, Allen's sculptures range in scale from thimble-sized fetishes to half ton pseudo-figures. Though made of the densest materials, the highly polished works appear to be in states of silent, inchoate movement. The New York Times described the shapes as "sensuous biomorphic forms," and 2014 Whitney Biennial co-curator Michelle Grabner located the oeurve as "an offspring of Brancusi and early 20th century abstraction." Grabner selected three of Allen's large-scale sculptures for inclusion in the 2014 Biennial.

Career and critical reception

Prior to the 2014 Biennial, the self-taught artist was known to a following of collectors, but less so to the wider art establishment. He rarely exhibited, preferring to sell independently from his Mojave Desert studio. The remote location of his studio, one hundred miles from Los Angeles on the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park, led to a reputation as a recluse.

Biennial literature, however, sourced originality in a practice which developed "independently of any recognized art movement" and cited its "impeccable sense of material and form" as the reason for Allen's unlikely discovery by the art world.

Though press accounts had previously taken notice of Allen's utilitarian forms, modernist furniture in the tradition of Noguchi and Judd, images of Allen's Biennial contributions circulated widely in both mainstream art-specialized media following the exhibition. TIME magazine named his white marble Untitled, 2013, one of the "Five Best Works at the Whitney Biennial", and The New York Times Style Magazine profiled the artist's "road less traveled to art world stardom."