Marsha Pels "Detroit Redux"
Schroeder Romero & Shredder
This event has ended.
In Detroit Redux, Marsha Pels has created a personal metaphorical landscape with an ensemble of five sculptures dealing with decay, frailty and rehabilitation in relation to the fall of a great American city. Pels continues to merge autobiographical narratives within the larger context of global concerns. Consisting of deconstructed surrogates of the artist herself, these sculptures fuse images of destruction with images of resurrection to make us question the body as a working machine, aging vs. fertility and the animal as savior.
Pels spent 2008-2010 as a Sculpture Professor in Detroit. In 1932, Diego Rivera was commissioned by Henry Ford to make the great fresco murals for the Detroit Institute of Art. Rivera described the city as "the great saga of the machine and of steel." In contrast, his wife, the painter Frida Kahlo, described Detroit as "a shabby village." This dialogue remains today as Detroit attempts to resurrect itself from political and economic devastation through a cultural "Renaissance."
Inspired by ruins of America's most famous post-industrial city while she endured a traumatic cervical fusion, Pels has created an open-ended narrative that is never didactic; a surreal and dramatic bildungsroman relating to the feminine experience of aging to the monumental Zietgeist of Detroit.
Pels' sculptural practice involves making these inspirations corporeal through labor-intensive, materially complex objects and installations in a masterful range of materials including: cast bronze and iron; glass and resin; marble and found objects. Images of anatomical structures blend into iconic architectural and mechanical forms. Engines become organs, concrete becomes bone and domestic animals become signifiers of resurrection.
In the tradition of her mentor, the late Louise Bourgeois, Pels' material language has become increasingly more complex over the past three decades. Cerebral and psychosomatic, Pels's installations force us to examine our impending mortality through dark humor and visceral imagery.
An important voice in New York for three decades, Pels has been exhibiting internationally since winning the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1984. This is her fourth exhibition with the gallery. Recently, Marsha Pels was the only American sculptor to participate in the 2011 Lorne Biennale in Lorne, Victoria, Australia. She is the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Award and a Fullbright Scholarship to Germany among others. Her work is in The Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany and the National Museum of Gaborone, Botswana, Africa. Her outdoor site-specific sculpture is in the public collections of Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ; The Pratt Sculpture Park, Brooklyn, NY; Smith Gilbert Gardens, Kennesaw, GA, and the Hebrew Home Museum, Riverdale, NY. Her work will also be featured in a forthcoming issue of Sculpture magazine. This exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue, Detroit Redux: Recent Sculpture 2009-2011.
[Image: Marsha Pels "To Fly, To Drive" (2009-2011) Cast epoxy resin and fiberglass, fluorescent lights, 1997 V8 Lincoln engine, plastic chains, steel cable, 7 x 16 x 18 ft.]
Media
Schedule
from January 12, 2012 to February 11, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-01-12 from 18:00 to 20:00