Tamara Johnson “No Your Boundaries”

CUE Art Foundation

poster for Tamara Johnson “No Your Boundaries”
[Image: Tamara Johnson "Water hose, Two Arcs" (2015) Photo credit: Phoebe Streblow]

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CUE presents No Your Boundaries, a solo exhibition of work by Tamara Johnson. With sculpture and installation, Johnson transforms familiar objects into fossils of the real. Fixtures of the home, such as garden hoses and fences, break from their utilitarian functions to wilt, slither, and pose in the gallery space.

“The work of Tamara Johnson is rooted in considerations of American suburban symbolism, its powers and contradictions. With great meticulousness and a singular sense of humor, she seduces, engages, questions. In 2014, at the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, Johnson created a swimming pool in a space otherwise occupied by a parking lot. Turning asphalt into a vision of leisure, Johnson’s sculpture was only a mirage. All the architectural details of a suburban yard pool were faithfully recreated, but instead of a body of water, the pool’s edges enclosed a green expanse of grass. It failed to deliver on the desires generated by the simple mention of a pool in the city’s summer heat, but it opened up new spaces for dreaming and thinking.

“At the CUE Art Foundation, the artist pairs two sculptural installations: There is a series of garden hoses that hang along the wall (a family of deformed trophies, absurd, abject, deviant, sensual… I spy: a cream cheese frosting covered hose…); and, in the space, a wood fence and a faux iron railing collide, merge, exchange DNA, and part again. In the process, they’ve lost their ways; they’ve failed to fully enclose. In their uselessness, they are reduced to their ancestral differences. Both are descendants of old American families. The railing hails from England. It lost the gilded spikes of its British cousins but still shares its pretense. Its role is not so much to divide as it is to serve as a status symbol, reminiscent of country estates reduced to 18th century London squares. The wooden fence is from another stock altogether. Less colonial, more colonizing; it bares the spirit of the pioneer settlers; simultaneously dividing, obscuring, enclosing, claiming and protecting.” —Renaud Proch

Tamara Johnson was born in Waco, Texas in 1984. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007 and the Rhode Island School of Design with a Sculpture MFA in 2012. Her work is a mash-up of sculptural making, choreographic landscapes and performative actions in the public/nonpublic. Most recently, she has exhibited her work at Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; The Lot LIC, Long Island City, NY; Judith Charles Gallery, New York, NY; Rooster Gallery, New York, NY; Microscope Gallery, NUTUREart and Black Ball Projects, all in Brooklyn, NY; Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island, NY; CR10 Arts, Hudson, NY; Eastfield College Gallery in Dallas, TX; Find & Form Space in Boston, MA and Philip Bloom Gallery in Nantucket, MA. Johnson’s Backyard Pool, 2014, was honored at the Public Art Network Year in Review 2015. This is Johnson’s first solo show in New York.

This exhibition is a winning selection from the 2015-16 Open Call for Solo Exhibitions. The proposal was unanimously selected by a jury comprised of panelists Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art; Renaud Proch, Executive Director of Independent Curators International (ICI); and Rujeko Hockley, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. In line with CUE’s commitment to providing substantive professional development opportunities, panelists also serve as mentors to the exhibiting artists, providing support throughout the process of developing the exhibition.

Media

Schedule

from February 13, 2016 to March 23, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-02-13 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Tamara Johnson

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