elisa d'arrigo: constructed, folded, sewn
susan leopold: complex    Nov 19 - Dec 22, 2009

elisa d’arrigo
constructed, folded, sewn

The Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to announce constructed, folded, sewn, a show of recent works by Elisa D’Arrigo. This is the artist’s seventh exhibition at the gallery, and will focus exclusively on intimately scaled pieces. The show will be up from November 19 to December 22, with an opening reception for the artist on November 19 from 6-8 pm.

Continuing the evolution of her unique body of work, D’Arrigo expands upon the incremental processes and intense color that informed her exhibition in 2007 to create a group of hand-sewn cloth and/or paper pieces incorporating aspects of sculpture, painting and drawing.

Several of the works are from a series entitled “Reconstructed”, in which D’Arrigo reworks cast paper pieces made during a residency at the Dieu Donne Papermill in 1994. The artist disassembled these earlier works, cut them up, and sewed them back together to create new pieces with entirely different configurations that suggest a subtly corporeal presence.

In addition, this show introduces a new series of “drawings” in which wet paper is folded, flattened with a rolling pin, painted, and covered with a dense accumulation of stitches which function as a kind of crosshatching. The result is a bristling surface of insistent web-like marks, and pieces that convey, like much of the artist’s work, a fierce, compelling beauty.

In an essay written in 2007 for the accompanying brochure Stephan Westfall writes:

“…the most important reading finds the artist’s desire for extendibility-the sense that any given work could continue the gesture of its making, that the composition could extend indefinitely into space, that the light might continue and spread.”

The Gallery is located at 529 W20th Street, 6th floor and is open Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 6 pm.

for further information contact miles manning at 212 463-9666. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

susan leopold
complex

The Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to announce complex, an exhibition of wall constructions by Susan Leopold. This will be her first exhibition with the gallery.

In a recent statement about her work Susan Leopold writes: “The buildings depicted in my work are abandoned structures, though still magnificent in their decrepitude. This body of work strives to captures the poetry of decay found in once proud buildings slowly being reclaimed by time and acknowledges how nostalgia is innately imbedded in these structures. Photographs are key components in the work. The locations I shoot range from empty swimming pools in Havana, Cuba to a condemned amphitheater along the East River in NYC.

This selection of sculpture and digital prints incorporate photographs, transparencies, aluminum and mirrors. Reflections and light are inherent qualities in these pieces. The illusion of space is achieved by imbedding photographs into sculptural forms lined with mirrors. When seen from a single position the pieces appear static, but the viewer’s movement makes the sculpture come alive. The shift that occurs between reflections of photographs and the actual surrounding environment is a comment on the thin boundary that exists between the conscious and subconscious realms of the human psyche.

The visually illusive nature of the materials used in these sculptures also addresses the fluidity of perception and how an individual’s experience of a place is preserved as a memory. I want my work to reflect how human interaction gives life to architecture, though people rarely appear in these pieces. Rather, the fractured views evoke the past use of the buildings, allowing viewers to create their own narratives.”

Susan Leopold was born in Chicago, Illinois. She lives and works in New York City. She holds a Masters Degree from the Interactive Telecommunication Program in the Tisch School of Arts, New York University, and a BFA from The School of Visual Arts, New York City. Leopold is a recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship, New York Foundations for the Arts, and commissioned by The Metropolitan Transit Authority-Arts for Transit NYC.

The Gallery is located at 529 W20th Street, 6th floor and is open Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 6 pm.

for further information contact miles manning at 212 463-9666.