The title "past/PRESENT" refers to two distinct sets of sculpture by Kathleen Schneider. Marcia Neblett's drawings, prints, and artist books pay homage to masterful printmaking. "No one belongs here more than you" captures the narrative of SHE, a fictitious character of Alexandria Smith's creation.
Kathleen Schneider
past/PRESENT
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce
past/PRESENT, an exhibition of sculpture by Kathleen Schneider from June 3 – 28, 2015. The opening reception is
on on Thursday, June 4th, from 6 – 8 pm.
A monster owl
Out on a fence
Flew away. What
is it the sign
of? The sign of
an owl.
Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970): “A monster owl...”, from Collected Works, 2002
The title past/PRESENT refers to two distinct sets of sculpture that occupy
separate spaces in the gallery and are interacted with in different ways. The
past works are presented together as an installation titled “Still Life (Gemini)”
- an assemblage of object “doubles” (a recurring theme in Schneider’s work)
including a pair of stone pillows impressed with hands and a set of humanoid
pitchers (marble, wood).
The recent or PRESENT sculptures are human-scaled pieces spaced in relationship to one another to be walked around and confronted one-on-one. This grouping includes three sculptures that are made from natural and industrial materials: an intricately netted
aluminum drapery (Silver Screen), a cacophonous “bouquet head” bundled from deconstructed artificial flowers (Monstrous Beauty)
and an irregularly shaped orb coiled from fabric-covered metal rod (Globe). In keeping with the artists’ broader practice these sculptures are hand-made and discrete. They share the artists’ emphasis on locating movement through implied action, stopped-action
and incremental transformation.
The recent sculptures will be placed in the gallery in proximity to each other for the first time. How they relate to each other is an
open-ended question for the artist. “Last year I gave up of my large Vermont studio affer 30 years. This past year I have made sculpture in various makeshiff spaces and in locations that are distances apart. I have only imagined connections among the disparate
objects being made in each”.
Kathleen Schneider
lives in Burlington, Vermont and New York City. She is a Professor of Sculpture at the University of Vermont. Solo
and group exhibitions include A.I.R. Gallery, Tria Gallery, New York, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey, DeCordova
Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Fleming Museum, Burlington Center for the Arts, Burlington, VT, Tolbooth Art Center, Kirkcudbright,
Scotland, and American Academy of Art and Letters, New York. She has had fellowships from the Vermont Arts Council and several
residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York.
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Marcia Neblett
Hybrids
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce
Hybrids
, a solo exhibition of
drawings and prints by Marcia Neblett. The exhibition will be on view
in Gallery II, with an opening reception on Thursday, June 4th from
6–8 pm.
Neblett’s drawings, prints, and artist books pay homage to masterful
printmaking of the past while also being of their own time and sensibility. Her works are influenced by a Medieval and Renaissance
tradition of materials and ideologies, but remain contemporary in
their sense of exaggeration, distortion, and combination. Individual
characters offen symbolize various virtues and vices, calling to mind
the highly didactic painting of Hieronomous Bosch. In works such as
“Hybrid Bird with Four Flying Arms over Egg City” and “Hybrid Rabbit
with Moose, Iguana, Owl” the inspiration is mythological: that of the
human condition as exemplified between nature, beast, human and
fantasy. In others, like “Cheers to the Fish”, the inspiration lies in the
reversal of human and animal.
The ongoing series of small drawings combines a child-like sense of
the whimsical with adult like fantasies.
Hybrids
expresses multiple
meanings, focusing on the duality of the human mind and revealing
meanings, focusing on the duality of the human mind and revealing some of the more secretive and amusing aspects of the
human personality.
Marcia Neblett
was born in New York City. She studied at Cornell University and the Arts Students League of New York before
receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from SUNY Purchase College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stony Brook University.
Her drawings and prints have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Asia in venues like the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, in the Bronx, New York; the High Museum of Art in
Atlanta, Georgia; the IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York City, the Lalit Kala Akademi in Chennai, India and The Nehru Center
in Mumbai, India. Marcia is a recipient of two Fulbright US Scholar Grants to India, two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, the New
York Foundation for the Arts (SOS Project Grant), the Jerome Foundation Printmaking Fellowship and the Alden B. Dow Creativity
Fellowship.
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Alexandria Smith
No one belongs here more than you
A.I.R. Gallery presents
No one belongs here more than you
,
an installation of new work by Alexandria Smith, a New
York-based mixed-media artist and educator. The exhibition will be on view in the Fellowship Gallery from June 3 -
27, 2015, with an opening reception on Thursday, June 4th
from 6-8pm.
No one belongs here more than you
captures a fluxus
moment in the narrative of SHE, a fictitious character of the
artist's creation. In this scene, SHE is stuck between two
worlds, reality and the sublime as she tries to find her place
in a world of hope and despair. The dichotomies explored in
this installation are evocative of the current state of society;
a moment in which love and hope are waging war against
hate and injustice.
The title of this exhibition is borrowed from a collection of
short stories of the same title by Miranda July. Like its namesake, this exhibition intends to elicit empathy as SHE embarks on a quest to be
loved and accepted.
The installation is comprised of sculptures interspersed throughout the floor, walls oozing with blackness and stripes simultaneously evoking
interior and exterior spaces. An image of SHE, a hybrid figure of plant and human origin, is projected onto a mixed-media relief collage
captured in a meditative moment of either pre or post-birth.
Interweaving memory, myth, history and personal narrative,
No one belongs here more than you
, brings up complicated notions of identity,
gender, sexuality and the psychology of self-discovery while remaining contemporarily relevant but without the didactic askance.
Alexandria Smith
is a Brooklyn-based artist born in the Bronx, NY and raised in New Rochelle, NY. She received her BFA in Illustration from
Syracuse University, her MA in Art Education from New York University and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Parsons, The New School for
Design. Alexandria is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, Golden Foundation
Residency, Vermont Studio Center Residency and Rush Arts Summer Residency. Alexandria was recently awarded the Fountainhead Residency, Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship and A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship for 2014/15. Her work has been widely collected locally and internationally
and exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions. Her recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Scaramouche Gallery and group exhibitions at The Schomburg Center and Thierry Goldberg Gallery. Her recent press includes the
Huffington Post
: "Alexandria Smith's Adorably
Grotesque Cartoons Show What Little Girls Are Made Of", “Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Artmakers You Should Know Under 40” and “10
Female Artists To Watch in 2013.” Alexandria currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Image: Kathleen Schneider, Globe, Wool, felt and wire, 65” x 25” x 25”
For all press inquiries, please contact; Jenn Dierdorf, Director of Fellowship & Development
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 4, 2015 from 6-8pm
A.I.R. Gallery
155 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 6PM
FREE and open to the public