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A group show of Arielle Angel, Derya Hanife Altan, Nicholas Dowgillo, featuring a reading by Rachel Harkai, March 25-April 25, 2008.
Derya Altan
In my textile based sculptural work, I am primarily concerned with
how the use of lush materials and fabric's tactile qualities can elicit
emotions and feelings in my viewer. Rather than focusing on the body’s
outward appearance however, I work with components that are internal
and hidden, often referring to the shapes of reproductive organs for
silhouettes. Through the use of lush materials, I entice the audience
to touch my work, confronting social morays about the preciousness of
art and the body. By using forms based on anatomical features, I
encourage the viewer to connect my work to features inside of
themselves and to imagine what these new organs might feel like as a
part of their own body. Each of my material choices – velvet, felt,
leather, latex, and tulle – attempts to heighten the tactile qualities
of the work through sensual use of fabrication. The bright color
palette and gradient color schemes I am denoting the passing of time
and a delineation of depth, as a reflection on emotional experience.
By placing anatomical shapes on the body as jewelry or adornment, they
become extensions of the wearer’s body. With this, I am raising
questions of when and how it is appropriate to interact with art
objects, and with other people. Is it suggestive for the wearer to
display such forms on their body? Is it appropriate to touch them if
they are earrings? What does it feel like to wear these shapes?
It is this conflict of restraint – the desire to touch and feel while
knowing that it is more acceptable not to- is at the core of my work.
Arielle Angel
My most recent work explores the concept of place, and the abstract and
sometimes contradictory ways that a place succeeds or does not succeed
in constituting a home.
My recent and temporary relocation from New York City to Spartanburg,
coupled with the fact that I may not return there has led me to
question the definition of home in fundamental ways and has contributed
to an overwhelming feeling of homelessness and displacement. Each
project I have embarked on this year has been influenced by these
feelings; each attempts to assess and define the qualities of home.
The series of 51 small reverse glass paintings “I’m Not Here,” began
with the simple desire to become better acquainted with Spartanburg in
the way I was accustomed to—by foot. I began a series of undirected,
unplanned walks around the area. It was on these walks that I began to
identify and photograph the small beauties of Spartanburg— abandoned
industrial and commercial structures, old cemeteries, and brilliant
sunsets. This process affirmed a sense of home and place in the form
of my developing Spartanburg aesthetic, in the choices that I made for
which images begged inclusion in the painting series. The result,
somewhat unintentionally, is a series that highlights not only my
enjoyment of a new and different landscape, but also the anxiety and
alienation that these solitary and depressed landscapes reflected in me.
Marquees also became a part of this Spartanburg aesthetic and I became
interested in the ways that they are used, especially by the faith
community, as a legitimate means of communication. It has become clear
to me that there are regional differences in communication style and I
have often been frustrated by an inability to effectively communicate
with the Spartanburg community in a meaningful way. This series
combines my delight in Spartanburg’s marquee landscapes, the underlying
feelings of anxiety and melancholy that accompany my search for home,
and the need to relate these feelings using a local communication tool.
While focusing on my new home in Spartanburg, I could not help but
incessantly invoke my old home, New York, with a great sadness and
nostalgia. I have been plagued by the feeling that I have left some of
the most vital parts of myself in New York. I chose seven places in
the city that held the most meaning for me and then wrote letters to
each of those places, discussing their role in my life in New York as
well as my decision to bring that particular life to an end. These
letters were handwritten onto scrolls and inserted into glass vials,
which in turn, are each held in one of my vital internal organs. These
organs will be installed clandestinely in the places that the scrolls
correspond to, in hopes that they might be found and read by current
residents. It is a very literal way of leaving a piece of myself in my
old home and, at the same time, making sure that I can never really
leave, and that I will always retain a presence there.
Through these projects and others, I aim to create a conceptual home in many diverse places simultaneously.
Nicholas Dowgwillo
While doing research on glaciers, I happened upon a Wikipedia article
about cryoseisms (AKA frost quakes). These are events that occur when,
according to the article, “water seeps down into the rock, it freezes
and expands, putting stress on surrounding rock” which “builds up until
it is relieved explosively.” This phenomenon and its opposite are
central to my new work.
Rachel Harkai
We live in an increasingly frightening world. The realities of
poverty, war, famine, loss of our natural resources, global warming,
pollution, and contamination of every kind grow more tangible by the
day, marking our emotional landscape with consistent, low-grade panic.
The present seems to inevitably merge with a future we are trying to
avoid, while we struggle to actualize the future that we desire.
And yet, as we move toward these futures, our ability to access
information is improving constantly, increasing the ease with which we
can draw on that which has come before us. We are consequently able to
rediscover history, reinterpret culture, and reanimate artifacts as
never before. Somehow, the future has begun influencing the present by
bringing us closer to the past.
My current work examines of the role of recycled culture in art and
society today. This thematic preoccupation stems from an ever-present
fear of the unknown, the concern that creation of "new" works of art
might be impossible, and a curiosity regarding the relationships that
the current generation of young artists might have to artistic
movements of the past. Through the poetry, lyric essay, collage, audio,
and found objects on display today, I aim to explore the value – and
ethics – of appropriation and reinterpretation as sources of
inspiration.
In his lecture titled “Goods,” designer Charles Eames asks us to return
our attention to those fundamental materials that our society once
coveted – objects such wood, wool, and chalk – reminding us to revisit
basic definitions of beauty and value that have become so easy to
overlook in today’s technological age. It is with a similar desire for
re-evaluation of our unspoken definitions of beauty, of purpose, and of
worth, that I present the work you see today.
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