Sandy Skoglund's 'Winter' Acquired by artpress at Paris Photo 2021

At Paris Photo 2021, artpress magazine fictively acquired Sandy Skoglund's 2018 photograph 'Winter' from the Paci Gallery (Brescia) stand. The work, part of a series on the four seasons, took nearly ten years to complete and marks a shift in Skoglund's practice: for the first time, she used digital sculpture to create the figures—three owls, an allegorical female figure named Blue Ice, and a living family of three in the background—set in a crinkled paper landscape with large snowflakes. Unlike her earlier works such as 'Radioactive Cats' (1980) and 'Revenge of the Goldfish' (1981), where she hand-sculpted plaster cats and ceramic fish, 'Winter' employs 3D modeling. The piece was inspired by the concept of 'frozen consciousness' and is part of a larger seasonal project that includes 'Fresh Hybrid' (2008), a spring-themed work with anthropomorphic trees. Germano Celant, in his 2019 monograph on Skoglund (Silvana Editoriale), described 'Winter' as 'at the summit of Skoglund's personal and artistic process,' praising its 'technical intransigence,' 'formal perfection,' and 'extreme perception of the world as a coagulation of complementary forces.' The fair took place at the Grand Palais éphémère in Paris from November 11–14, 2021.