Susan Grabel “Venus Comes of Age”
Ceres Gallery
This event has ended.
Ceres Gallery present Susan Grabel’s cast paper sculptures, collagraph prints and collages of aging women’s bodies in her first solo show at the gallery. Grabel is a figurative sculptor whose work deals with political and social issues.
In our youth-oriented culture, the media constantly bombards women of all ages with images of femaleness that bear no relation to what they see in the mirror. The body Grabel depicts is not idealized, but shown as it is, with all its wrinkles, lumps and bumps, imprinted with life’s experiences. Through repetition, humor and classical references, and the use of handmade cast paper with its rich textures, colors and lightness, she shows the beauty of the aging woman’s body as well as its sensuality and grace. Using the aging body as just another sculptural form, she normalizes it, confronting the conventional biases against aging women and validating women’s experiences of themselves.
The collagraph monoprints and collages come from a unique process using a compressed version of the sculpture as an etching plate. Through repetition and overlapping of forms and fragments and color, she uses the figure to create abstract organic compositions, highlighting the beauty in nature’s patterns.
Susan Grabel’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at galleries, universities and museums across the country including the Staten Island Museum, SI, NYC,Denise Bibro Galley, NYC, Ceres, NYC, Soho20 Chelsea, NYC, Monmouth Museum, NJ and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, MI. Her work was included in such important surveys of sculpture as In Three Dimension: Women Sculptors of the ‘90’s curated by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island, NY, 1995; and Sculpture of the 70’s: the Figure at Pratt Manhattan Center, NYC in 1981.
Grabel’s awards include six grants from the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island including an Original Works Award and an Excellence in Art Award, a Jentel Artist Residency in Wyoming and sculpture commissions for the Women’s Health Center at Staten Island University Hospital and the Staten Island Children’s Museum. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times as well as the Staten island Advance.
[Image: Susan Grabel “Here She Is” cast paper, h. 40”, w.33” d.33”, 2011]
Media
Schedule
from April 30, 2013 to May 25, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-05-02 from 18:00 to 20:00