Carl D’Alvia’s oddly discrete and minimal hirsute animal sculptures simultaneously seek to combine disparate and often contradictory themes, such as: minimal/baroque, old/new, comic/tragic, high/low, figuration/abstraction. It is the dialectical nature of these relationships that animates the work and counteracts its stillness and silence. Fanatically crafted and perversely hyper-real, they offer moments of unexpected beauty as a result of collisions, manipulations, and attempted graftings. The works possess an unexpected sweetness and aesthetic charm that derives from D’Alvia’s cultural/medical experiments.