Alexa Horochowski, Lava Fold, 2021

Alexa Horochowski
Lava Fold, 2021
dye sublimation printing on fabric
Edition of 75
28 x 36 in.
Walker Commission

With work informed by international travel and immersion in a diverse range of landscapes, Minnesota-based artist Alexa Horochowski (US, 1965) creates sculptures, photographs, video works, and installations that examine the fraught relationship between humankind, nature, and time. Her objects and images are often chosen for their complex histories, foregrounding both our impact on the earth and our vulnerabilities to climate change.

Lava Fold relates to a group of recent works on fabric in which Horochowski incorporates imagery from the lava fields of the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Big Island, Hawai’i. These imposing landscapes, she notes, are evidence of how “the destructive force of lava becomes fragile and regenerative once cooled.” On fabric, the imagery is animated, suggesting the powerful flow of lava, while the delicacy of the sheer material alludes the earth’s inherent fragility.