NYAB Event - Amelia Biewald “Big Brass/Light Opera”

Amelia Biewald “Big Brass/Light Opera”

Magnan Metz Gallery

[Image: Amelia Biewald "Petit Mort" (2014)]

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Magnan Metz Gallery presents Amelia Biewald’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.

In Big Brass/Light Opera, Biewald transforms the gallery space into an 18th century European parlor room, recreating the period’s lush opulence and sophistication. However, the glamorous presentation is askew as the encapsulated scene has the tell-tale signs of a rogue stag run amok, a chaos ensuing as a result of a sparring within the space. Amidst the knocked over furniture, wigs, and fans the now expired stag, Heavy Weather is suspended upside down having been brought to the ground by the weight of his own antlers, its presence within the room signifying a complete arrest of time.

Inspired by the visual intricacies found in historical masterpieces such as Diego Vasquez’s Las Meninas (1656). Biewald uses similar visual cues that allude to an outside viewer within the narrative forming a discord between perspectives. Generating further tension are five vintage picture frames inlaid with mirrors and decorated with the heads of deer. Looking into the mirrors, the heads form a curious push and pull through the reciprocity of gazes. The scene is further stratified as the viewer establishes a context within the composition whilst moving about the mirrored space, becoming both the viewer and subject. Within these notions of perception the complete narrative exists in a plane somewhere in-between the multiple perspectives.

Biewald’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has been a recipient of various artist grants and fellowships, including a Jerome Artist Fellowship, MN the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, NY a Smack Mellon “Top Picks” Award, NY and a Grand Prize Juror Award for her work in Material Matters, MCAD, MN.