Luka Fineisen creates installations that invade gallery spaces using (seemingly) natural elements like bubbles, sand, and ice. Her materials are varied. In the case of her most recent installation, the bubbles are not made of soap solution, but plastic. They imitate the real thing perfectly, creating an ethereal experience for the viewer. Although they’re as tempting to touch as real bubbles, unfortunately, you’d still be in an art gallery, so no such luck! The bubbles are tantalizingly playful and light. It’s a beautifully effortless piece.

Most of Fineisen’s artwork functions in the realm of mild fantasy relating to the natural world. Sometimes, as with her hay installation, the materials are real. The hay makes an amusing statement. In the photo, it seems to sit and stare out at you from inside some sort of freight elevator. In another, Fineisen creates a sandstorm around the perimeter of a building. In yet another, she has ice an iceberg (made presumably of plastic) encroaching on a staircase. Each explores our delicate relationship with the elements of our world, and she demonstrates how even the most seemingly harmless elements, like bubbles, might form a kind of subtle and humorous counter attack on our space, as we have overtaken the natural world.

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Her most overtly political sculpture is of a girl standing beneath a stream of liquid gold pouring from a skylight. She extends her skirt to catch it, and it plops on her face with as much disregard as a stream can have. To me it reads like a rude awakening to the lack of sustenance the gold can actually provide. (Via The Fox is Black)