Alma Allen Not Yet Titled (2022)
Spanning a wide range of materials including bronze, parota wood, various types of marble, obsidian and stalagmite, Alma Allen’s work retains a singularly unique energy and longing. From sinuously thin curls to magmatic and tensile outpourings, Alma’s forms present unguarded expressions of bodily held memory and wonder, while also offering a “wry, patient, even violent cross-examination” of material and the “knotty, manifest language of the world,” as Christina Catherine Martinez wrote in Artforum. Alma’s most recent solo exhibitions include Mendes Wood DM & Van Buuren Museum & Gardens, Brussels (2021); Kasmin Gallery, New York (2020); and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2019); group exhibitions include the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Writing for The New York Times, the director Matt Tyrnauer described the “sensuous biomorphic forms” of Alma’s sculpture, while the art critic Andrew Bernardini wrote of “how his gentle and enduring will shaped these works with their sensual skins and gravitational force.” Alma lives in Tepoztlán, Mexico.