Petah Coyne

National Academy of Design

Petah Coyne is a contemporary sculptor and photographer best known for her small- and large-scale hanging sculptures and floor installations. Working with innovative and disparate materials, her practice spans the organic and the ephemeral, incorporating dead fish, mud, sticks, hay, black sand, specially formulated and patented wax, satin ribbons, silk flowers, and more recently, velvet, taxidermy, and cast-wax statuary. Unafraid to confront a range of subjects or tackle contemporary themes, Coyne’s innate dualities appear in the dichotomous motifs in her work: transformation and constancy; life and loss; beauty and darkness.

Throughout her oeuvre, Coyne has drawn inspiration—as she does media—from diverse sources, including literature and film, world culture and the natural environment, and even her own biography.

Untitled #697 is an example of one of Coyne's black sand works, which she began making during the Neo-Expressionist years of the late 1980s. It is composed of shredded cars and then covered with black sand (the residue from pig iron casting). The works she created in this manner were semi-abstract and vaguely figurative—sometimes playful and at other times dark.