Sierralta: Visual Tension that Never Ceases

Banner Image: Callus, wood, 2026. Image courtesy of Lanesboro Arts. 

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With regular traffic, Lanesboro is about two hours and twenty minutes driving from Minneapolis. When Lanesboro made it to the list of The Best 100 Towns in America in 1996 it was no coincidence, the city has had a rich legacy supporting art and artists. In fact, in 2014 a resolution was passed to declare the entire town of Lanesboro an arts campus because of its thriving artistic scene. It was a cosmical call for Chilean born Minneapolis-based artist Alonso Sierralta to have landed an exhibition of his work at Lanesboro Arts this past April and May.  

The exhibition Natureworks, which ran from April 4th to May 31st at Lanesboro Arts, reinstated the powerful physical presence and metaphorical essence of Sierralta’s sculptures. At their core, the majority of Sierralta’s sculptures have developed from ideas related to his experience as an immigrant (Sierralta does not think of his sculptures as political. I argue, however, that any form inspired by notions of transplantation, examination of displacement and/or adaptation, can be interpreted as ideologically political in some capacity).

 

Golem, wood, earth, 2018. Image courtesy of Lanesboro Arts. 

The six sculptures in Natureworks, all of variable dimensions, are predominantly made out of natural wood and earth, one of the sculptures uses PETG. Sierralta’s most recent piece in this small selection is Callus (2026), a large shape mounted on the wall collectively formed by several natural wood fragments (it is hard not to think of the sculpture as a decorative piece as well). Another work titled Hilt (2024) uses intertwined natural wood roots attached to a basket-like lower base. Another grouping, but this time of same-size modules made out of wood and earth titled Golem (2018), stretches several feet across the wall (Golem can be configured differently each time is installed). The earth portions of Golem resemble emptied vessels with extending tubes sometimes projecting straight out into space, other times pointing sideways or down. Perhaps the most disquieting and intriguing sculpture in the exhibit is Exo (2022), a piece of weathered natural wood with a hole at the top covered in polyethylene terephthalate glycol. Exo feels oddly figurative, like an unknown portrait or an emblem.  

Sierralta’s work is guided by creating visual tension, this is achieved by the combination of natural things and man-made materials, as if trying to establish a conversation between two things that should not be together. “For instance, a branch that is very gnarly and curvy, kind of like an oak branch that has a lot of flow and movement, and then pairing that against something that’s not that, the opposite of that, which would be steel. Steel is very cold and very straight. By putting these two entities together, the job of the artists was then to force a natural, aesthetically pleasing conversation between these two things” (Sierralta qtd. in Latin Art in MN). 

 

Hilt, wood, 2024. Image courtesy of Lanesboro Arts. 

While Sierralta’s sculptural approach has arguably remained similar for decades, his work against the resistance of materials and battle with spatial design continues to surprise. Sierralta’s work is hard to categorize (the artist himself prefers no categorizations). It is common to see spectators in awe and confusion every time they witness his work. I argue this is all proof of Sierralta’s creative genius and importance as a contemporary artist. The natural rhythms of Sierralta’s sculptures may recall the work of English sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, while the manipulation of forms using hand tools and machinery brings to mind the constructions of Polish artist Monika Sosnowska. There is even something more contagious to me, I cannot separate Sierralta from his art, in the sense that Sierralta seems to have embedded his very psyche and soul (each word serving different contexts) into these wonderful forms.  

I first encountered the work of Sierralta in 2004 at an exhibition titled Forms+Nature at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, his sculptures have intrigued me and obsessed me ever since. Sierralta moved with his family to Omaha, Nebraska in 1981 when he was fourteen years old. He has been living and working in Minneapolis since 1998. 

Sierralta was a finalist for the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award this year. He has been the recipient of the Southeaster MN Arts Council Grant and the Next Step Fund Grant of Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. 

In 2021, The Anderson Center at Tower View in Red Wing, Minnesota, acquired Sierralta’s sculpture Hold for its sculpture garden.◼︎ 

 

Lanesboro Arts’ next exhibition is titled Carrying Each Other  and prioritizes artists who identify as LGBTQIA +, Two-Spirit, BIPOC, disabled, and/or rurally located artists (including those in southeast Minnesota). Lanesboro Arts is located at 103 Parkway Avenue North in Lanesboro, Minnesota. IG @lanesboroarts