via: celeste
Notes:
Kiah Celeste’s sculptures transform discarded industrial and domestic materials into arrangements that feel simultaneously unstable, humorous, and strangely alive. Metal frames, construction debris, fabric, industrial wool, plastic, and secondhand objects are removed from their original functions and reorganized through repetition, balance, and visual rhythm. Rather than concealing the materials’ former lives, Celeste allows their scratches, stains, and irregular surfaces to remain visible. This gives each sculpture a physical history while revealing the aesthetic potential of objects that society has deemed exhausted or useless. Her work challenges the assumption that sculpture must be made from precious or permanent materials; instead, decay becomes a productive beginning. Kiah Celeste’s artist statement
Celeste’s process is guided by foraging, intuition, and close attention to how materials behave. She gathers objects from urban and industrial environments, then combines only a few components with minimal hardware, allowing gravity, pressure, tension, and weight to become active forces within the composition. Her sculptures often appear to lean, stretch, sag, or hold themselves together through a delicate negotiation between control and collapse. The physical demands of bending, lifting, suspending, and joining these materials are essential to her process, making the artist’s body an unseen measure within the finished work. Although the compositions may initially seem spontaneous, their sense of precariousness is carefully calibrated; every connection establishes a conversation between strength and vulnerability. Burnaway studio interview
The most compelling aspect of Celeste’s practice is her ability to give emotional and bodily presence to materials associated with waste, labor, and mass production. Hard industrial structures can appear tender, while fabric and wool may suggest skin, hair, internal organs, or protective coverings. This uncertainty allows her work to move between abstraction and figuration without settling completely into either. At times, the formal elegance of her arrangements risks softening the social and environmental realities surrounding discarded materials. Yet that tension is also central to the work: Celeste does not offer recycling as a simple moral solution, but asks viewers to reconsider their relationships with usefulness, consumption, and neglect. Her sculptures ultimately demonstrate that transformation does not erase an object’s past—it allows that history to enter a new and unexpected form.
- RJG//AI