Lucy Puls
dal 23/4/2003 al 24/5/2003
Segnalato da
23/4/2003
Lucy Puls
Littlejohn Contemporary, New York
Ignotum per Ignotius. In her current body of work, Puls utilizes album covers, all of which impacted her as a teenager growing up in the 60's and 70's. But this is about memory, not about nostalgia. The artist scrapes and sands down portions of the exterior covers and, at times, the protruding vinyl albums themselves.
Ignotum per Ignotius
NEW WORK
This is California-based artist Lucy Puls' second solo exhibition at
Littlejohn Contemporary. For years, she has worked with items that are used
and discarded with predictable regularity. The consumed consumer item. This
has become her material both literally and figuratively.
She asks to what extent we are influenced and/or imprinted by the things we
have around us. This question is the conceptual foundation for her work.
She does not expect a definitive answer. That is not the point. Her goal
for the work is for it to serve as a guide not as a teacher. The viewer
must have the freedom to veer off into directions that interest them alone.
The spell cast on her for ordinary things is due to the circumstance that
we live with and use them without "deep thoughts". We don't have illusions
that they serve to secure our place in a particular social class or
contribute to our idea of whom we think we are. These are disposable and
often uninteresting objects, just things. Lots of folks have the identical
items in their homes. We take no deliberate notice. They are no "wonder",
though to her they are precious raw material---a goldmine of information.
By using these objects as the impetus for the conceptual foundation of her
work she acknowledges their pervasiveness and familiarity, thus their
potential as cultural unifiers. During the 90's, this artist's idiom
would result in an accumulation of objects, such as toys or skeins of
yarn, encased in resin.
In her current body of work, Puls utilizes album covers, all of which
impacted her as a teenager growing up in the 60's and 70's. But this is
about memory, not about nostalgia. The artist scrapes and sands down
portions of the exterior covers and, at times, the protruding vinyl albums
themselves. The images are then replicated into pigmented inkjet print
form, usually multiplied in mirror-image two or four times before joining
them together on a wood support. The areas of abrasion are joined at the
center seams creating a Rorschach-like composition.
Ms. Puls teaches at the University of California at Davis and has had
numerous gallery and museum shows nationally. Her work is in the permanent
collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Oakland
Museum, Oakland, CA, among others. She is featured in the recently released
book "EPICENTER: San Francisco Bay Area Art Now" by Mark Johnstone and
Leslie Aboud Holtzman.
"Ignotum per Ignotius", the title of this exhibition, is a Latin term
meaning "explaining the unknown by means of something even more unknown".
For further information or visuals, please contact Jacquie Littlejohn at
212-980-2323.
LITTLEJOHN CONTEMPORARY
41 EAST 57 STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022
t-212-980-2323 f-212-980-2346