Olivia Kaufman-Rovira is an installation and sculpture artist based in Jersey City whose work is comprised of post-consumer plastic bottles. Kaufman-Rovira initially began collecting plastic bottles in 2008 when she was living in Barcelona, a city with poor quality tap water and thus, an abundance of plastic bottle waste. With her accumulating collection of plastic waste she created her first piece of work using water bottles, The Plastic Voyager, a boat that she sailed on a pond in the middle of the city. It symbolizes both a fun creative way to use our waste and, on a more serious note, our society’s dependence on single-use plastic and addiction to convenience.
The Plastic Voyageur, 2008
In 2010, Kaufman-Rovira was invited to contribute to the ‘Upcycled’ exhibition at the Ernest Rubenstein Gallery, curated by Barbara Lubliner. ‘Upcycled’ brings together artists who use plastic waste as their medium of choice in their art making. This choice of art-making materials speaks to the abundant availability of plastic post-consumer waste. Kaufman-Rovira’s site-specific work, Flotsam Reef Spiral, was constructed from plastic bottles and staples. Her plastic sculpture is abstract in form and works off the architecture of the exhibition space, specifically the entrance to the gallery. Similar to The Plastic Voyageur, her work focuses on two main concepts: to literally transform perspectives when gazing through the plastic and inspiring a new creative perspective on this single-use object, while also being intended for people to be confronted by the sheer quantity of plastic waste and our society’s overuse and dependence on this product. The view of the other side of the plastic gets warped slightly when looking through it, which may speak to plastic water bottle companies, like Nestle, warping our view as consumers to purchase a completely unnecessary commodity. From afar, the sculpture aesthetically engages the artist before they absorb the choice of materials used upon closer observation – much like the work of Chris Jordan and Andrea Legge discussed in earlier posts of this blog. Flotsam Reef Spiral and the ‘Upcycled’ exhibition as a whole, helps bring awareness to the plastic derivatives of consumerism.
Flotsam Reef Spiral, 2010
For the Carriage House Arts, ‘Site Specific’ exhibition in 2011, Kaufman-Rovira contributed her work Green Beings, Plastic Hives, displayed in Gallery 4. Her massive chandeliers of wheat grass and water bottles swing side-by-side in a deliberate juxtaposition of nature and plastic, life and death, ephemera and permanence. The grass symbolizes life, human energy and potential for growth while the plastic, salvaged from the trash, is a product of human potential, ingenuity and energy. The plastic is presented in an organic form making reference to the life cycle, although it is dead and will last forever on this earth unlike organic living things. Like her two other works, Green Beings, Plastic Hives presents a visual perspective of our consumptive society.
Green Beings, Plastic Hives, 2011
Some general concepts that Olivia Kaufman-Rovira is portraying in her work are not very novel. The idea of giving new meanings to materials for the sake of art making can be traced back to Picasso’s collage of newspaper cut outs, ropes and other materials during his synthetic Cubism period. Using plastic bottles as a medium for her work would not be so significant if it didn’t pose an overarching critique of consumerism and the passivity of our throwaway society – a pressing issue that has become more and more significant in the past decade.
-M
Sources:
www.oliviakaufman.com
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2010/12/jersey_city_artist_gives_new_m.html
http://www.edalliance.org/clientuploads/ArtSchool/Upcycled_catalog%20(2).pdf
http://carriagehousearts.org/pdf/IslipSiteSpecifics11Catalogue.pdf
The Plastics 