ALISON RAGGUETTE

Porcelain, Silicone Rubber.  16 x 8 feet. 

An overflowing pile of broken porcelain shards encroach from the wall as glistening pink rubber cascades down to collect in open cavities of the rubble. Rejects and Residue depicts the waste involved in ceramic industry that is coated with a seductive candy-like layer. This pile of detritus reveals the imperfect and flawed, dejected and rejected, discarded and ignored. Challenging associations of high and low material culture, the interplay between porcelain and rubber proposes an ecological ambivalence: both toxic yet pure, seductive yet abject and damaged yet optimistic. This scene of debris laments how we value and discard the imperfect with little concern for our increasingly vulnerable environment.

PHOTOS: Humberto Reynoso

Saturation Point is an exploration of melanin, the source of pigmentation that is responsible for the phenomenal spectrum of human skin. These sculptural works portray familiar yet dominant objects that exude large bodily masses of swollen and spilling color gradient. In response to societal implications of power and oppression, these sculptures display symptoms of an overextended and strained physicality. Chosen for the universal associations to the body, red iron oxide oozes from the ceiling, cascading down the wall to form puddles on the floor. The intention of this mise-en-scene is to incite a visceral empathy where the audience can feel an inclusive relatability. Saturation Point strives to affirm that human resiliency surpasses social constructs and laments how messy and precarious the process can be.

Pristine porcelain tainted with superimposed biofilm supporting multiple bacterial diseases are colonizing, dividing and growing. A repulsive attraction, Pathogenic Playground portrays a fragile fantasy that is dangerously beautiful. At first glance it seems innocent: a miniature recreational space with evidence of children at play. Upon further inspection the work appears brittle, infected, and potentially fatal. Driven by parental anxiety, this piece depicts the frantic impulse to protect our young, attempting to maintain sterility and control exposure to an increasingly toxic world. Offering a blinded optimism, the liquid container possesses the dual purpose of dispensing and disinfecting. It proposes a quick-fix cure-all that a desperate mother might find comforting. Despite radical efforts to keep our children safe, Pathogenic Playground embodies the irony that the natural world is beyond human control.

Porcelain, polymer clay, glass, metal, wood.

PHOTOS: Steve King.

Cross Section Ellipse is a sculptural wall work created in thrown porcelain, medical grade

silicone rubber, and silk thread. Inspired by biological cross sections revealed under a

microscope or MRI, Cross Section Ellipse expands to a superimposed scale of twenty-six feet

wide. This piece is activated by light, as the silicone rubber is translucent and diffuses

color, light, and shadow. The combination of thrown porcelain with this highly

engineered material intended to manufacture medical tubes and human prosthetics

makes this sculpture enveloping and mysterious, yet playful. Cross Section Ellipse’s

extraordinary scale and synthesis of materials proposes a duality between the organic

and technological, as informed by biomechanics, the technology of life, and the

mechanical world of nature.

This body of work was created in part during an artist-in-residence program at the Purosil Mission Rubber Factory in Corona, California. This residency opportunity allowed me to explore new technical inquiries within an industrial manufacturing environment. Purosil generously provided technical expertise, facilities, and all medical grade silicone to me to create these works.

Photo credit: Steve King

Cross Sections are a series of wall pieces created with thrown porcelain, silicone rubber, and silk (series numbered 1-15). Evocative of bodily function and cross-section anatomy, these sculptural works relate to the flesh and bones that make up our common, yet mysterious interior compositions. This body of work was created in part during an artist-in-residence program at the Purosil Mission Rubber Factory in Corona, California. This residency opportunity allowed me to explore new technical inquiries within an industrial manufacturing environment. Purosil generously provided technical expertise, facilities, and all medical grade silicone to me to create these works.

Inspired by the dynamic function of our multilayered epidermis, Congealed is a series of sculptural wall pieces that contrast naked porcelain with bulging flesh-like rubber. Referencing cross-section anatomy, these works mimic how skin functions to hold the inner body in place, as well as its wondrous malleability to stretch from the internal outward, accommodating extra fat, muscle, and fetus. As it resembles such membrane and internal organs, the Congealed series parallels skin, bones, and body fluids that make up our common, yet mysterious interior compositions.

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008. H:10ft/W:8ft/D:6ft.
lip cast porcelain, PVC, stainless steel, water, dye.
hotos: Sean Black.

Visceralab is a sculptural installation composed of porcelain slip cast objects suspended in a maze of clear tubing containing colored fluid. These porcelain objects are both playful and alien, replicating a combination of automotive, plumbing, and medical parts that morph into smooth organic forms. Vein-like tubes of bubbling liquid entangle these hybridized forms in a seductively strange network. Proposing a parallel between the internal body and mechanical systems, this curious and compelling system is alive with sounds of flowing fluid as it pulsates and jiggles with all its activity. Navigating between the body and technology, Visceralab operates on the intersection of the organic and manufactured as informed by biomechanics, the technology of life, and the mechanical world of nature.

Acting on the interactive nature of sensation and the physical body, Dilate is a sculptural wall piece composed of slumped glass and porcelain forms. The interplay of these objects considers ideas of passage and protrusion, exploring a visceral empathy relating to eroticized parts of the body. This interdisciplinary dialogue employs a sensitive strategy of the visual and tactile. Even without touch, the visual experience of the work expresses tactility —a synesthetic experience. 

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