“Schmatte” Exhibition
Storefront Ten Eyck
This event has ended.
Schmatte
schmatte (from the Polish szmata): a Yiddish word meaning rag, old garment, an item of clothing in fashion and clothing-industry slang.
Schmatte explores notions of the discarded and the distressed in the work of four artists: Josh Blackwell, Antonia Perez, Katherine Powers and Randy Wray. Josh Blackwell began collecting plastic bags from city streets and kitchen cupboards about six years ago. In the studio, the bags are fused shut and/or embroidered with yarn, deliberately thwarting their function. The bags attempt to redress their semi-degraded status with the addition of colorful embroidery in geometric patterns. The compositions draw upon “high” and “low” vernaculars such as Geometric Abstraction, Minimalism, folk traditions and do-it-yourself craft projects. Contrasting “artificial” plastic with “natural” yarn, the work interrogates the economies of waste and necessity. Antonia Perez is a mixed-media artist who makes sculpture, assemblage and installations. She gathers discarded objects such as used plastic bags, household linens, tissue boxes and assorted detritus from the home that has the potential for conversion to something unexpected. Her process transforms them from their lowly status as trash to the elevated existence of an art object. Katherine Powers is fascinated by the paradoxical activity of dissolving the physical and giving form to the ephemeral. She is attracted to the shimmer and variety of color in our abundant refuse, a sort of urban plankton. The artist views the collages as vibrant portraits of our internal world, defining the interplay of material, emotions and spirit. Randy Wray’s recent works recycle and transform the detritus of our castaway culture–junk mail, discarded polystyrene packaging, used clothing and old furniture–to perform a kind of alchemy and examine ideas about faith. They explore a number of seemingly polar opposite relationships: abstraction/representation, beauty/grotesquerie, natural/man-made, naive/sophisticated, familiar/foreign. By blending disparate ideas and sensibilities, the artist aims to create new paths of connection.
About the Artists:
Originally from New Orleans, Josh Blackwell currently works in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Combining familiar yet unlikely materials in order to reconfigure everyday experiences, his work vacillates between painting, drawing, and sculpture. Josh received a BA from BenningtonCollege and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He has taught at BenningtonCollege, Parsons the NewSchool for Design, and Pratt Institute.
Antonia Perez, a visual artist born and raised in New York City, received her Master of Fine Arts from Queens College, City University of New York. She has exhibited locally and nationally including at the Queens Museum and the 2011 Biennial of El Museo del Barrio. She is a recipient of the 2011-12 Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program Award. Recent group shows that included her work are Pressing Matters, Parallel Art Space, Bushwick, NY; Nearly Neutral, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; The Emo Show, EFA Project Space, NYC; and a site-specific wall painting and sculpture installation at Praxis Chelsea Gallery, NYC.
Katherine Powers lives and works in New York City. As an artist, Katherine has evolved from making sculpture in more traditional materials, to collage using plastic bags. Her abstract work of the past decade retains the presence and dimension of sculpture. It is influenced by both her experience in theatrical wardrobe and with Shiatsu. She has a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After many years behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, she now maintains a private Shiatsu practice and teaches at Swedish Institute.
Randy Wray is a New York based painter and sculptor. He attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program. Wray’s work has been shown widely in the United States a as well as internationally. Solo exhibitions include White Columns, New York; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; Galeria Camargo Vilaça, São Paulo; Derek Eller, New York; and Greenville County Art Museum. Group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, Kate MacGarry Gallery, Cranbrook Art Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Kohler Arts Center. Wray’s work has been written about and reviewed in The New York Times, BOMB, Artnews, Art In America and Artforum. Museum collections include The Art Institute of Chicago, Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, Greenville County Art Museum and Weatherspoon Art Museum.
Media
Schedule
from May 30, 2013 to June 23, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-05-30 from 18:00 to 21:00