Iviva Olenick “Reach Out and Touch Me”
The IMC Lab + Gallery
This event has ended.
The IMC Lab + Gallery presents Iviva Olenick in a solo
exhibition, “Reach Out and Touch Me.” This exhibition is the result of
Olenick’s nine month participation in IMC’s Co- Create residency program,
which pairs artists with technologists to enable the creation of new
participatory and socially conscious art forms.
Olenick translates hashtags, selfies, tweets and emoticons into sculptures
and paintings ranging in scale from handheld to life-sized. The
contemplative process of her practice, including embroidery, weaving,
painting, stop motion, requires deliberate pacing. Each word, stitch, or
stop motion frame relates to a moment of intimacy or human connection.
These painstaking and time intensive techniques contrast with the speed
and ease with which social media, selfies and tweets proliferate. To
elucidate contradictions between online and offline behavior, Olenick
re-contextualizes handcrafts within digital culture, posting images online
and creating stop motion animations of embroideries stitch by stitch, and
tweets letter by letter.
Olenick’s installation at IMC Lab + Gallery treats the space as a type of
library with discrete listening and viewing stations. As visitors approach
both life-sized and hand-held sculptures, their movements trigger audio
recordings of interviews with the friends and acquaintances that inspired
the sculptures. Stop motion animated video is projected at the scale of a
smart phone screen, elucidating the narratives embroidered on Olenick’s
handcrafted dolls. Viewers are invited to get close to works and enter
into these characters’ psyches through exposed narratives. Viewers can
participate by communicating with Selfie (@EmbroideryPoems) and
@YrImaginaryDog on Twitter. Selected tweets will be embroidered on the
sculptures.
Iviva Olenick is a Brooklyn-born and based artist focusing on the
intersections of language, handcrafts and social media. She has a BA in
French Literature and Psychology from Binghamton University/SUNY and an
AAS in Textile/Surface Design from FIT. She is represented by Muriel
Guepin Gallery in New York City. Olenick’s work is in numerous local,
national and international collections, including the Schwartz Art
Collection of the Harvard Business School.
Media
Schedule
from February 19, 2015 to March 18, 2015