NYAB Event - Emilie Brzezinski "Family Trees"

Emilie Brzezinski "Family Trees"

This event has ended.
At Kouros Gallery
Media: Sculpture, Installation

Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Emilie Brzezinski began her career in the 1970s with a series of solo shows in Washington, DC, and in New York. Working in a variety of media, including resin, wood fiber, and wood, her expressive themes always related to nature. Eventually she focused entirely on monumental wood sculpture, using chain saws, chisels and axes to carve forms that took inspiration from the wood she found at mills, gardens, and development sites. Often retaining the vertical structure of the original, she shows her own marks on the wood, emphasizing the importance of the process as much as the product.

Usually working in series, she creates environments that simulate gigantic forests. "Family Trees" is a metaphorical portrait of the artist’s family, and a personal statement of identity. The installation, in which the artist explores the possibilities of combining hollowed wood trunks with photographic images, is not only an affirmation of the artist's cultural identity, it speaks also to the crucial element of self-definition within one's family. In its entirety, "Family Trees" contains subtle juxtapositions of spaces that do not play against each other, rather, create an interplay of different spaces. It is also an artistic testimonial to the fact that her roots are now deeply planted in America.

During the last decade she has had museum installations in the United States and she just completed a tour of her installations "Forest," through the capitals of Eastern Europe, from where her family originates.

Mika Brzezinski, Emilie's daughter and the co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, has just completed her memoir, “All Things at Once” (Weinstein Books, New York), coinciding with the completion of her mother's “Family Trees.” An expression of her life and love for her family, “Family Trees” closely mirrors the narrative of her daughter's book, and both book and installation are testimonials to their identities as artists, wives and mothers. On February 8th, the book will be launched at Kouros, and the art critic, and show curator, Barbara Rose, will narrate the video she produced for “Family Trees.”

Curated by Barbara Rose