7 Booths from SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2023 – Wildcard, by Clare Gemima
Lydia Nobles. Blair, 2021. Acrylic, highchair, pleather, polyester, resin, velvet. 21 x 25 x 34 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Kourosh Mahboubian has two booths at Spring Break this year, so for the first time in months I was finally able to see my dear friend – ironically in a waiting room, with almost zero time to talk before his next appointment. Lydia Noble’s saddling sculptures aggrandize various women’s abortion experiences and patiently wait to be acknowledged, judged, and have every inch of them scrutinized by their audience. Ring a bell, Ladies? Nobles uses translucent materials, resins, and a multitude of textures to create awkwardly shaped, sometimes prickly visual representations of some very difficult, yet enlightening stories that now exist as hard and soft symbolic structures. Similarly, Mahboubian’s other curated booth Lifelines showcases an equally extravagant and rather invasive installation by Natsuki Takauji made from hand-blown glass, fabric and brass wires that really make you question what other materials she’s using in her studio. Utilizing medical imagery at an extreme closeup, Takauji’s own ovum pattern creates her tree of life’s flouring green top, while her Believers series includes viscerally arresting blotty abstractions, shaded in various tones of blood-red.
