Denise Corley “Survey 2010-2019 Unmoored”
Sideshow Gallery
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Denise Corley is exhibiting a selected group of paintings, works on paper, wire works and manufactured molded pulp and styrofoam works. The title of the show “ Unmoored ” describes the drifting from tradition and moving to unpredictable places. The progenitor in the show is a large trunk shaped wire piece titled “Unknown Entity” (2011) and is one of the first pieces made of coated wire tubes. Created after the death of the artist’s mother, this piece seems to have conjured a dormant interest in abstraction and spirituality. Corley’s work draws on ideas inspired by the substance of reality as being formulated by physicists and mathematicians such as string theory, membrane theory, Calabi-Yau manifolds but also the reality of memory all suggesting a many dimensional, folded space of being. Does the universe operate just like the creative mind always asking “what if”? Is mutation the great creative source of the universe?
The paintings and works on paper are directly related to the wire works that the artist has been exploring. Many of the works have a collage element to them embedding vinyl cloth in the compositions. The grid structure of the screen implies compartmentalization and hidden structures are an important component of the artist’s vision.
Corley’s wire works could be called dimensional drawings. The wire starts out as coated hardware cloth, Corley bends grids into tube circles and lines making basic structural shapes. The tube structure resonates with many natural forms like plant structures, corals, bones, microorganisms and subatomic structure. This structure mutates into new forms.
The manufactured packing materials paper pulp and styrofoam works are of interest to Corley because of the dimensional surface conjuring ideas of Euclidean geometry and warped space. Corley uses these discarded materials and reinvents them into interpretive primal responses to the shapes with surprising painterly results. As in the wire works, these dimensional paintings suggest the illusion of perspective whether through line or color. The combination lends an unworldly yet human made quality to these works.
Hints of influence in Corley’s works are Courbet, Picasso and Matisse. Instructors- John Egner, Robert Wilbert, Louise Nobili, Ron Gorchov. Affinities- The Detroit Cass Corridor Artists, Lee Bontecou, Elizabeth Murray, Mark di Suvero, Cy Twombly, Al Taylor. Major influence and education came from working for Richard Bellamy from 1983-1998.
Denise Corley is a painter, a gardener, amateur photographer and certified scuba diver, has a BFA in painting from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. Born in Detroit and has lived in Williamsburg Brooklyn since 1981. Corley has shown in New York and Internationally.
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Schedule
from March 01, 2019 to March 24, 2019
Hours: Thursday- Sunday, 1-6pm.
Opening Reception on 2019-03-01 from 18:00 to 20:00