David Ebony’s 10 Highlights of The Art Show 2020: 9. Judy Fox at Nancy Hoffman Gallery
Some of the figurative ceramic sculptures here by New York artist Judy Fox were inspired by biblical scenes from Genesis, and especially by Lucas Cranach’s visionary paintings of the same biblical text from the 1500s. Fox’s 3D interpretation is of a phantasmagoric Garden of Eden that might have been. Surreal, plant-animal hybrids appear as spiny sea urchins with breasts, or Venus flytraps with legs. Made of painted terracotta, each of the sculptures is a technical tour de force. The largest work, Snake Tree (2015–2019), looming about seven feet tall, resembles Cranach’s tree in Eden, but this would-be apple tree has apparently morphed into a menacing, coiling serpent.