Alyson Shotz “Night”

Derek Eller Gallery

[Image: Alyson Shotz "Object for Reflection" (detail) (2016) punched aluminum and stainless steel rings, 120 x 180 x 48 in.]

This event has ended.

Derek Eller Gallery presents the opening of Night, a solo exhibition by Alyson Shotz. Reflecting an ongoing interest in the ineffable properties of light, Night is comprised of works in an array of materials which transmogrify as a result of variations of light within darkness.

The show’s centerpiece is Object for Reflection, a large-scale woven sculpture sited in the main gallery. With minimal gallery lighting, the sculpture responds specifically to the changing light of the winter sun. Comprised of thousands of tiny aluminum pieces hand folded around stainless steel rings, Object for Reflection appears at times solid and opaque or translucent depending upon the time of day. Available light acts upon the aluminum circles like pixels on a screen, in constant but subtle motion, underscoring the mutability of the light itself. The colors of night become apparent: darkness is not simply black, but rather a spectrum of black: inky darkness, silvery moonlight, deep blue.

Rooted in the tradition of monumental metal sculpture by artists such as Serra or Di Suvero, Object for Reflection re-imagines the notion of what a large-scale metal sculpture should look like: instead of being a solid heavy welded object, it is comprised of many parts entwined together- flexible, sagging, responsive to light. Originally two dimensional, the sculpture is made up of connecting geometric planes; these planes become three dimensional as they respond to gravity, space, tension, weight and materiality.

Temporal Shift, frosted vinyl installed on the gallery storefront window, represents two orbits of the earth around the sun depicted by a double oval. The shadow created by the movement of the actual sun across the sky, shining through the window projects this shape into the gallery at varying positions. Every hour throughout the exhibition reflects a subtle re-positioning of the shape, functioning like a kind of clock or sundial.

The Broken Dark Earth wall works are created by letting porcelain slabs stretch and break within the heat of the kiln. Woven porcelain “fabric” patches hold the broken pieces together to keep them from drifting farther apart. Again, shifting light subtly changes the color of each work and creates an ephemeral shadow layer onto the panels.

This will be Alyson Shotz’s seventh solo show at the gallery. Her work will be included in the upcoming exhibition Art & Space at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and her large outdoor work Scattering Screen is currently on view as part of Art in the Garden at Blue Star Contemporary Art, San Antonio, TX. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA; Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC; and Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Shotz was a Stanford University Research Fellow at the Arts Institute, Stanford University from 2014-2015. Her work is in numerous institutional collections including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA.