DALLAS, Texas (October 11, 2021)—The Nasher Sculpture Center announces its next offsite Nasher Public project: Dallas-based artist Oshay Green. Green’s sculpture will be sited outdoors at The Power Station, an influential non-profit visual arts venue near Fair Park in Dallas, owned and directed by collectors Alden and Janelle Pinnell. The work will be on view October 23, 2021 – February 20, 2022.
For Nasher Public, Oshay Green has made his largest sculpture to date. The work continues his use of a three-dimensional lozenge or rounded octahedron form and takes its title, Mundane Egg, from a chapter in The Secret Doctrine, a 19th-century theosophical text by Helena Blavatsky. In Blavatsky’s book, the mundane egg serves as a metaphor for the origin of creation, equally applicable to the cosmos or a work of art, the new entity breaking through its protective shell to emerge into existence.
As in much of Green’s work, with Mundane Egg the process of making—the physical labor involved—underscores the ritual of creation, often equal parts meditative or mind-numbing: the front is made of salvaged steel bars methodically cut and ground by the artist to squared edges and points. The form contains two large pieces of obsidian, a black, glassy stone the artist sourced in Mexico, grasped in claw-like metal settings. The cut and reshaped steel bars are at once menacing and protective. At this size, the sculpture evokes a variety of readings: a vessel, like a canoe standing on end; a talisman containing sacred objects; or an enormous, industrial venus flytrap or ribcage protecting (or devouring?) the stones.
About Oshay Green
Oshay Green (b.1994) is a self-taught artist living and working in Dallas. His practice explores the dynamic relationship between the body and objects, using a variety of materials such as steel, wood, concrete, ink, and sound as tools or instruments in mediating this relationship. Influenced by religious ritual and late 60’s free jazz era practices, Green’s process incorporates improvisational gestures with the body and the acoustic properties of his materials and tools to intuitively access a composition which then manifests an object. After the process, the object is then observed to see if it produces an effect on the body. His work is represented by AND NOW gallery in Dallas and has been exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art.
About The Power Station
Founded in 2011 in a former Dallas Power and Light generating station by collectors Janelle and Alden Pinnell, The Power Station is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to providing a platform for contemporary art projects in Dallas. The venue has featured installations by artists such as Oscar Tuazon, Virginia Overton, Calvin Marcus, Olivier Mosset, Lucy Dodd, Sturtevant, Yuji Agematsu, and will exhibit the work of Paulo Nimer Pjota this fall.
About Nasher Public
Nasher Public is an ongoing, two-pronged public art initiative which aims to generate access to public art by North Texas artists at the Nasher and throughout the greater Dallas community. The project launched first at the Nasher in a newly formed gallery, presenting monthly exhibitions, followed by an ongoing series of offsite exhibitions in partnership with area businesses.