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8/9/2005

Two exhibitions

Sperone Westwater, New York

Evan Penny: No - One In Particular

Sperone Westwater is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculpture by Evan Penny. This is the artist’s first major one-man show in New York.

Interested in the terrain between the “real” and the “replica”, Penny makes twice-life sized or larger renderings of human heads and bodies out of silicone, pigment, hair, and aluminum, magnifying the details and subtleties of the human skin. To stand in front of one of Penny’s sculptures is to be amazed and unsettled by the lifelike human form staring back at you and the artist’s innovative process that pushes the boundaries of representation between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional.

At a time when very few artists have found a way to make figurative sculpture and remain contemporary, Penny has created a radically new vision of figuration and sculptural practice set against the backdrop of photography. Recently, he has been incorporating what might be seen as the mistakes of digital photography—double exposure, depth of field, blurring, achromaticism—into a vocabulary of sculptural realism that results in visual distortion in three-dimensions. He says, “My interest is to situate the sculptures perceptually between the way we might see each other in real time and space and the way we imagine our equivalent in a photographic representation. The intention is that the work be seen in a context where the sculptural and photographic images, mirroring each other, subtly shift, confound, and inform anticipated readings.” The results are human forms that are stretched, blurred, and manipulated in space while maintaining their meticulous detailing and sculptural veracity.

Several of the sculptures included in the exhibition are entitled “No One – In Particular” and numbered, indicating that while these hyperrealist sculptures appear to be near facsimiles of real people, they are instead imaginary portraits. As believable images of people who do not exist, these works undermine the factual ground of the photographic portrait and emphasize the mutability of identity and the body.

Born in South Africa in 1953, Penny currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Since his first solo exhibition in 1981, Penny’s work has been exhibited throughout Canada and
abroad. A major survey of the artist’s work, “Absolutely Unreal,” traveled to
several different venues in Canada during 2004 and 2005, including Museum London, London, Ontario, the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta. Most recently, Penny was included in a group sculpture exhibition, “Figure it Out”, on view at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art this past spring.

There will be an opening reception, with the artist in attendance, on 9 September from 6-8 pm. A catalogue with full color reproductions and an essay by David Moos, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, will accompany the exhibition.

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Nicholas R. Schutsky: PerForm

Sperone Westwater is pleased to announce “PerForm,” an exhibition of paintings by Nicholas Schutsky, on view in our Terrazzo Gallery.

The exhibition consists of several resumé paintings, large and small-scale renderings of the artist’s resumé, painted in varying colors and fonts. Each canvas is obsessively painted, a work-intensive self-portrait in text that doubles as a formalist study of color and contrast. As a young artist whose work has not yet been exhibited extensively, Schutsky does not have an overwhelming resumé— rather it is almost strange to see its contents reproduced on a grand scale in oil paint. Employing a palette reminiscent of the modernist and minimalist traditions, these canvases offer a gentle and humorous critique of modernist painting and the politics of the art world wherein an artist’s biography/bibliography is often valued above the artwork itself.

In the center of the room lie eight wooden 2 x 4 beams gilded in 24-karat gold leaf. Randomly splayed atop a white base like those you would find at a lumber yard, these objects, typically used in construction and other labor activities, have been elevated to high art due solely to the expensive material which the artist has used to coat their surfaces. Another contradiction of form and content, these sculptures combine the delicate art historical practice of using gold leaf in religious painting with the crude “2 x 4”, a symbol of masculinity and menial labor.

Born in 1977 in Union County, New Jersey, Schutsky received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Richard Stockton College and went on to receive a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Delaware. This is his first exhibition at Sperone Westwater and his first major gallery show in New York. Schutsky currently lives and works in New Jersey.

There will be an opening reception, with the artist in attendance, on 9 September from 6-8 pm.

Sperone Westwater
415 West 13 Street - New York

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