Brooklyn-based sculptor Genesis Belanger makes ceramic sculptures that look like advertisements gone wrong. Mixing together everyday items such as cigarette stubs and soda cans with human limbs and organs, she creates surrealist sculptures with a humorous edge to them.
“The advertising industry understands the strength of visual persuasion and I find it fascinating that our desires can be manipulated through aesthetics,” Genesis explained in an interview with It’s Nice That. “I use elements of that persuasive language in my work.”
Genesis knows a thing or two about advertising. Having studied fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago she has built props for advertising campaigns in Manhattan before earning her MFA from Hunter College, where she was accepted into the painting program only to be then drawn to clay.
“Objects are often surrogates for our self-identity,” she added. “The uncanny is the feeling of something being strangely and uncomfortably familiar, this discomfort comes from seeing ones projected self in an object. I am using humour and style to address the complexity, nuance and dissonance of human psychology.”
Her ceramic and porcelain creations were featured in numerous galleries and museums, including the Galerie Perrotin in Seoul and the Galerie Perrotin in New York.
