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Floorboards Burst in Destabilizing Wood Installations by Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels

2019, part of Beauty Surplus at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. All images © Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center

Knoxville, Tennessee-born artist Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels ruptures long-held conceptions that human environments are stable⁠—literally. Part of two different projects at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Bothwell Fels creates ridge- and mountain-like installations that split and burst through the floorboards, sometimes even spanning multiple rooms. With lighter pigmented tops, the wood pieces swell and expand, solidifying their resemblance to natural features.

The artist’s goal is to transform mundane spaces into areas of disruption, forcing her viewers to question how their environments inform their senses of reality. In a statement, Bothwell Fels said her “sculptural ecosystems pierce the architectural facade of banality with fantastical outcroppings of growths, pores, wrinkles, spills, fractalized structures, and rupture, inviting a reassessment (of) the norms that are established and reinforced through the physical materiality of our built environments.”

Her show Beauty Surplus is on view through May 24 at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Check out Instagram for more of Bothwell Fels’s destabilizing projects. (via Art Ruby)

2019, part of Beauty Surplus at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center

2019, part of Beauty Surplus at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center

“Untitled (Flooring)” (2016-2017), flooring, shims, plaster, at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in New York City

“Untitled (Flooring)” (2016-2017), flooring, shims, plaster, at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in New York City

“Untitled (Flooring)” (2016-2017), flooring, shims, plaster, at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in New York City

“Untitled (Flooring)” (2016-2017), flooring, shims, plaster, at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in New York City

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