Pending
dal 7/11/2003 al 20/12/2003
Segnalato da
7/11/2003
Pending
Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York
A double exhibition by two female artists. An architectural installation that changes all the gallery's space and three big sculptures accompained by a series of drawings
Haim Chanin Fine Arts presents , an exhibition of works by Edith Derdyk and LucÃa Warck-Meister, on view from
November 8 through December 20, 2003. The artists will transform the gallery
with two breathtaking installations. Half of the space will succumb to Edith
Derdyk's site-specific thread installation Declive/Incline, while the solemn
beauty of three sculptural works by LucÃa Warck-Meister, made of feathers,
iron, cotton and aluminum, overtakes the other. Besides the mixed-media
sculptures, the show includes gestural graphite drawings and photographs by
Derdyk and charcoal and hot glue drawings by Warck-Meister.
30,000 meters of black cotton thread and 20,000 staples make up
Declive/Incline. The lines in Edith Derdyk's installation extend through the
gallery in a descending plane. Her three-dimensional work embodies the
essence of drawing by creating volume from flat lines.
Derdyk is also informed by chores traditionally assigned to women, such as
weaving. The labor-intensive work requires the artist to staple each thread
to the walls, floor and ceiling until, slowly, a black mass begins to
emerge. The processes of creating and later dismantling the piece are
integral to the work. Beautiful organic patterns are formed after Derdyk,
scissors in hand, lets the threads fall to the ground or hang from the wall.
The tension that held the whole disperses and the cycle is complete. The
writer Noemi Jaffé compares the accumulation of small delicate particles
into a powerful mass that imposes itself in space to the power
of the weak to bring down the strong through patience and persistence, as a
woodpecker bringing down a gigantic tree.
Warck-Meister's works also examine deceptive fragility and strength. In
Heart, Warck-Meister, places rusted metal pins on a cotton pillow. The
weight of the pins contrasts with the softness of the pillow. The work's
intimate scale draws us close. In Arms, the artist simply suspends long
elegant wings from an aluminum swing. It is the lost gesture of the embrace,
the fallen feathers, meant for flight, overtaken by the force of gravity.
The sculptural group is complemented by Mouth. On a marble slab lays a pair
of shears with carefully cotton wrapped around them. Tension emanates from
this piece. The half open shears may at any given moment close and cut the
cotton. Conversely, the cotton protects the cutting edge, softly nurturing
it and neutralizing its sharpness. What is seemingly delicate becomes
strong. With disarming simplicity, the work of LucÃa contains the
meanderings of the human soul. The juxtaposition of contrasting materials
embodies inner conflicts, it suggests the simultaneous violence and
sweetness, the boldness and shyness, contained in each of us. It is a
metaphor of the complex, absolutely non clear-cut ties, that bind and relate
one human being to another.
Derdyk was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1955, where she currently lives. She
has participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions at
prestigious institutions, such as the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Museu de
Arte Moderno, São Paulo (curated by Aracy Amaral), Palácio das Artes, Belo
Horizonte, Museo del Chopo, Mexico D.F., Museo de Arte Moderno, Rio de
Janeiro, Museu de Arte Contemporaneao, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Galerie
Haus, Nuremberg, Germany, HaidHausen Museum, Munich, and the São Paulo
Biennial, Brazil. Derdyk has published several books on the theory and
technique of drawing. She was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio
residency in 1999.
Warck-Meister has held individual exhibitions at Fondo Nacional de las Artes
and Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others. She
has shown collectively at Museu de Arte Moderno, São Paulo, The Work Space,
Argentine Consulate and El Museo del Barrio in New York, Miura Museum of
Art, Matsuyama City, Japan and Briggens Museum, Bergen, Norway. Her work has
been reviewed by such renown art critics as Amy Rosenblum, Mercedes Vicente,
Elena Oliveras, Kenneth Johnson, Victoria Verlichak, Guillermo Whitelow and
Fevre FermÃn.
Haim Chanin Fine Arts
210 Eleventh Avenue
New York
tel: 646-230-7200
fax: 646-230-7989