Alma Allen
Past exhibition
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Kasmin is delighted to present its first solo exhibition of work by sculptor Alma Allen (b. 1970, USA.) Opening on January 23, 2020, at 509 West 27th Street, the presentation brings together 12 large-scale works realized in bronze, wood, and stone. Responding to the architecture of the gallery, Allen demonstrates unprecedented ambition in the works’ scale. Included in the exhibition is his tallest sculpture to date—a bronze measuring approximately 16 feet at its highest point.
A career-spanning monograph published by Rizzoli Electa and organized by Kasmin and Blum & Poe, who also represent the artist, will include text from Douglas Fogle and Glenn Adamson, and is due for publication in Spring 2020.
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Psychologically charged and compulsively expressive, Alma Allen’s works evoke a curiosity regarding the life of objects and the ways in which form and material can circumnavigate the utility of language. Known for his distillation of diverse organic references, the artist’s works simultaneously invite and resist classification.
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Often realized in materials hand-selected from quarries or foraged from landscapes in the area surrounding his studio, the works emit a mysterious and ineffable lifeforce. The abstracted, biomorphic shapes feel talismanic not only in their atmospheric qualities but also by way of their playfulness: bronze sculptures appear impossibly malleable, even liquid; wood grain patterns are accented to highlight their material history, and stones such as peach onyx, pale green cantera, and obsidian vibrate with a sense of mysticism. Whichever medium Allen chooses, the works’ final forms and their particular outcrops and eccentricities are conjured by the artist during their making, born of a wordless conversation between sculptor and object.
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The artist’s hybrid process encompasses preindustrial methods of hand-shaping and carving alongside advanced 21st-century technology. After repeatedly reworking finger-scale clay maquettes, Allen will employ, as needed, a self-built robotic device for translation into large-scale works, finished with an impeccable softness that belies their weight and density. A bronze foundry, constructed in the artist’s studio in Tepoztlán, Mexico, enables Allen to complete works on site. This instinctive shaping of resistant material draws upon both the process-based conceits of Surrealist automatism and the formal inventiveness of Constantin Brancusi and Samuel Beckett.
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Works
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About the Artist
Portrait by Diego Flores. -
Explore
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Alexis Ralaivao: Éloge de l’ombre (In Praise of Shadows)
May 15 – July 25, 2025 509 West 27th Street, New YorkFor Éloge de l’ombre (In Praise of Shadows), Ralaivao unveils a suite of new paintings rendered entirely in black and white. Working within the self-imposed parameters of a reduced palette, Ralaivao sharpens his attention to composition, light and shadow. In arresting portraits and still life tableaux, Ralaivao magnifies the most subtle of details at grand scale by strategically framing his subjects. Influenced by film noir, Ralaivao’s works absorb the viewer into a romanticized world of drama and suspense as if the viewer has arrived at a narrative in media res. -
Theodora Allen: Oak
May 7 – July 25, 2025 297 Tenth Avenue, New YorkAllen’s atmospheric oil paintings on linen depict natural phenomena and symbols chosen for their enduring presence in human history and culture, often drawing from mythology and medieval imagery. From hearts and infinity loops to rainbows and locusts, these subjects serve to underscore nature’s propensity for renewal following destruction. Branches of an oak tree, a powerful symbol of wisdom, strength and endurance, reappear. Through compositional devices, such as gates, windows, and architectural niches, Allen's illusionistic spaces create a dynamic interplay between inclusion and exclusion. Her scenes emerge as ruins burgeoning with life, offering glimpses into a realm where the natural world and the metaphysical entwine. -
Alma Allen on Park Avenue
May 2 – September 30, 2025
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