Joel Morrison: Steel Life Crisis, Almine Rech

Joel Morrison sculpture and technique
Artist Joel Morrison is known for turning rubbish like broken trolleys, balloons and hammers from his neighbourhood in Los Angeles into slick, polished sculptures and wall works. Encasing these objects in coats of stainless steel, they seem like bulging living organisms that are struggling to break out of their silver skin. Immediate and spontaneous, Morrison is not just another mechanical sculptor, he uses classic methods like the lost wax process to create work that is both hi and lo fi. With his interest in the waste of consumerist society, Morrison also combines a lot of different cultural movements like Greek sculpture, Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, Arte Povera and even the Finish Fetish movement in LA during the 1960s and '70s. 
Almine Rech Gallery, London exhibition 2015
For his third exhibition at this central London gallery, Morrison reworks legendary artist Frank Stella's Protractor series as stitched cargo blankets hanging across mirrors. You may have seen Stella's installation of stars outside the Royal Academy, but he is also known for this colourful series of paintings which pushed the idea of the shaped canvas. Morrison also interprets conceptual American artist Robert Morris' corner piece, which he found in storage covered in a blanket, into a new series of Target Paintings (2015). The real focus is the idea of the protective blanket layer and the commodity of art which can sit in storage, unseen and unappreciated. Look out for Morrison's own corner piece which is unprotected and bare, radiating rays of sunshine out of a Tupperware container in reference to Kenneth Anger's short film, Lucifer Rising. 
Joel Morrison's sculptures toy with the mechanical and handmade in this new London contemporary art exhibition, which is worth a look if you are looking for things to do in central London.