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4/2/2011

Agnieszka Brzezanska

Clifton Benevento, New York

Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves

Clifton Benevento is pleased to announce Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves, a solo exhibition of Polish artist Agnieszka Brzezanska. Running simultaneously with 852 Hz, a solo-exhibition at Michael Benevento (Los Angeles), Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves, presents an array of photographs and paintings addressing interweaving concerns of the female body, movement, rhythm and the moments when issues of abstraction ground spiritual ideas.

Inspired by the interlaced philosophies of spirituality and unhindered movement emphasized by the foremothers of Modern Dance, the exhibition derives its title from a statement by Isadora Duncan: “dance waves sound waves light waves-all the same,” suggesting aesthetic parallels between the rhythms of nature and those of the dancer that contrast starkly with the ideologies of movement informing ballet.

Using free-form movement as an aesthetic and critical dock, a significant portion of Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves involves a series of inkjet on cotton paper prints in which images of iconic female dancers including Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan are eloquently overlaid with abstract drawings.

In Untitled (Loie Fuller), for example, a black and white photograph of Loie Fuller dancing on a stage is obscured by a series of organic, geometric arcs that aggregate to form shapes and clouds that in turn surround the dancer. Mediating, meditating, obscuring and accentuating a focus on histories of movement eroticized, the tension in Brzezanska’s images also stems from investigations of abstraction and figuration.

The cloud-like forms appearing in some of the artist’s combined images turn into orbs – the circles of light caused by a camera’s flash intercepting tiny airborne particles that some have theorized to be connections to the spirit world – in others. Appearing in a series of Brzezanska’s photographs of sunsets and circling the heads of dancers, the orb-photographs extend the artist’s interest in the formal constructions of the spiritual.

Noting conceptual precedents in Hilma af Klint, Agnes Martin and Emma Kunz, Brzezanska’s practice pushes matches in movement across mediums. Channeling a turn of the 20th century notion of the body as a site for the multi-disciplined integration of discourses on science, nature, art and metaphysics, Brzezanska’s new paintings incorporate the formal use of the cloud and the orb again: dots evolve into a series of specks and arcs that wisp across her canvases with a natural grace evocative of the ways in which clothing may be moved by the wind.

Ann Daly, a dance historian, describes the view of the body during this period as a "meeting ground, where discourses of science, nature, art, and metaphysics were happy to find themselves not-so-distant relations."5 Francois Delsarte is a prime example of this multidisciplinary integration that Daly depicts. Delsarte believed "that from harnessing the powers 'of body and spirit, results the intimate fusion of art and science, which, though each one is born of a different source, nevertheless ally interpenetrate and reciprocally prove each other.'"

Born in Gdansk, Poland, Agnieszka Brzezanska lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw. Her work has been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Kusthaus Baselland (Basel), DAAD Gallery (Berlin), Hotel (London), Karma International (Zurich) and Galerie Kamm (Berlin).

For further details, please contact michael at mc@cliftonbenevento.com

Opening Brunch Reception: February 5th, Saturday 3-7 pm

Clifton Benevento
515 broadway (between broome / spring), New York
Hours: tuesday - saturday, 11-6pm
free admission

stampa

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