Andra Ursuta: ‘Magical Terrorism’
Exhibition review for Art in America, December 23, 2012
Andra Ursuta: Conversion Table, 2012, concrete, wire mesh, manure, coins and mixed mediums, 37 by 8 by 8 inches; at Ramiken Crucible.
Excerpt
With its windows shattered, seeming cadavers arranged for examination and a glittering space rover settled atop a collapsed wall, Ramiken Crucible appeared to be the excavation site for some distant disaster. In fact it was the venue for Andra Ursuta’s third solo show in New York, “Magical Terrorism.” The Romanian-born, New York-based sculptor succeeded in dislocating the already hard-to-find Lower East Side gallery, laying bare its structure and opening it to its surroundings even as she projected it into another time and place altogether.
Consider the achievement an act of “conversion,” a term Ursuta taps for its semantic suppleness with her “Conversion Tables” (all works 2012). The series comprises eight sculptures of female torsos, five of which wear elaborate necklaces crafted from fabrics traditionally used by Gypsies and covered in coins from the U.S., the EU and Romania. (Identical in their distorted shape and pockmarked condition, the torsos vary only in accoutrements, position and sheen.) Adorning figures that look long dead with currency in such small denominations as to be lost in exchange fees and market fluctuations, Ursuta slyly undercuts precise fiscal conversion while hinting at long-forgotten foundations of finance.