Fran Siegel

Los Angeles artist Fran Siegel makes drawings and installations that revisit the traditional concept of landscape. Based on extensive research in such fields as geography, geology, history, anthropology, and sociology, her compositions combine a variety of graphic modes-maps, diagrams, flow charts, photo transfer, tracing, collages, cutouts, architectural blueprints-to evoke the transformation of cities, movements of populations, and other topics highlighting the ever-changing nature of landscape. In Contraption 4, she drew inspiration from Alexander Calder's circus and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. In the artist's words, "this collage drawing uses a transitory architectural vocabulary to encapsulate the shifting dynamics of global migration. The circus travels from town to town, pitching its temporary tent, while urban infrastructure is depicted as unstable, off-kilter and crumbling. A stone wall is skeletal and upside down. Tents, ladders, stairs, and rigs are piled upon each other, depicted in multiple perspectives, scales and processes."