Felix 2021

Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present a solo booth by Indigenous, Los Angeles-based artist Ishi Glinsky.

Working in a variety of media, which includes painting, drawing and sculpture, Ishi Glinsky investigates the traditional practices of his tribe, the Tohono O’odham Nation, as well as other North American First Nations to create contemporary homages to sacred events and customs. These investigations often consist of a close study of the history and significance of a craft tradition, the committed apprenticeship of its technique, and its assimilation or transformation within Glinsky’s artistic practice. Each immersive installation, sculpture or painting is a fusion of intertribal celebration and resourcefulness, permanence or evolution, all of which is intimately reflected in the carefully crafted material nature and composition of a given work. A strategy common to Glinsky’s production consists of creating disproportionate shifts in scale in order to both amplify Indigenous practices and stories, and memorialize them in the form of monuments to survival.

For his booth at Felix, Glinsky presents all new works focused on celebrating jewelry inlay techniques from Indigenous tribes of the US southwest. Each of these oversized, sculptural interpretations are informed by the perspective of Indigenous jewelers, allowing the industriousness of their vision and production methods to inform the process, line work and shape of Glinsky's sculptures. The images celebrated throughout these works originate from iconography and characters seen in the works of the Zuni people (and referred to in markets and trading posts) as ‘Zunitoons.’ Several of Glinsky's works revisit these artifacts, enlarging the pieces of such creators as the renowned Zuni jeweler Veronica Poblano, while other sculptures are three-dimensional depictions of cartoon stills.