NYAB Event - Pawel Wojtasik "At the Still Point" & Marietta Hoferer "Coptic Light"

Pawel Wojtasik "At the Still Point" & Marietta Hoferer "Coptic Light"

Smack Mellon

This event has ended.

Smack Mellon presents a five-channel video installation by Pawel Wojtasik and a series of pencil and tape drawings by Marietta Hoferer.

Wojtasik’s visually powerful videos typically take on weighty and controversial subjects—processing waste, domesticating marine life, and performing autopsies—without claiming moral authority. Instead, the artist employs rigorous formal techniques to create captivating metaphors for our complex and contradictory age. At the Still Point documents the activity of a ship-breaking yard in India, where huge vessels are dismantled and reprocessed for new use, interspersed with footage of cremation rites on the banks of the Ganges and images of Dhobi Ghat, an archaic laundry facility on the outskirts of Mumbai. This dramatic installation juxtaposes the consumption, destruction and renewal that accompany the rapid transition from earlier social forms into modern capitalism. The piece deals with the cyclical nature of phenomena, social and otherwise, as manifested in the spirituality of ancient religious rituals. The installation is united by an all-encompassing soundscape by the electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello.

Marietta Hoferer’s luminous pencil and tape drawings also employ rigorous formal technique but with an entirely different outcome. Hoferer begins her process by laying out a grid in pencil on paper, and then adds layers of tape that shift in tonality over time. The results are shimmering geometric patterns that appear defined by logic and process but actually reflect the organic movements of the artist’s hand, with references as disparate as Agnes Martin’s Minimalist paintings and North African textiles. Subtle in their muted colors, Hoferer’s drawings alter according to changes in light and the placement of the viewer. In Coptic Time, a title borrowed from Morton Feldman, the artist continues to refine her unique process, creating seven schematic textured drawings that animate the gallery.

Media

• Drawing
• Video installation

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