SHINIQUE SMITH
To the Ocean of Everyone Else
10 November - 22 December 2011
Opening: 10 November, 19.00-21.00
Brand New Gallery is pleased to present To the Ocean of Everyone Else, the first Italian exhibition by the American artist Shinique Smith.
Reaching beyond the confines of sculpture, painting and site-specific installation, Shinique Smith's works combine complex social and cultural references drawn from a vast range of resources from art history to urban life. Graffiti, Japanese calligraphy, abstract expressionism and minimalist sculpture are but some of the cross-references we can perceive in the artist's work. Without preparatory sketches or preconceived compositions, Smith sees each one of her paintings as an act of “frenetic meditation” in which, through fluid movements, she allows her hand to lead, guide and outline calligraphic gestures which dance across the canvas. Her sculptures, three-dimensional collages of clothes and objects tied with ropes, reveal a combination of formal beauty and social critique, underlining the global problems of reuse and recycling. Inspired by the nature of the “things” we consume and abandon and their influence on our individual and collective experiences, Smith reinterprets the links that go into the creation of our myths, our personal memories and our relationship with the vastness of existence. Each object is instilled with the story of the individual who possessed it; material, excess and waste are intimately tied in with personal significance and market value.
Through language, colour, fabrics and objects that have been found, Shinique Smith investigates our growing dependence on the acquisition of material goods, encouraging the spectator to weigh up the disadvantages of an economy based on consumption while simultaneously exploring the possibilities of abstraction.
Shinique Smith was born in 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland; at present she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison have recently held retrospectives devoted to her work. Numerous museums have hosted her solo exhibitions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; SECCA Museum in Winston-Salem, NC; Illinois State University Galleries, Normal, IL. Her works have been included in prestigious collective exhibitions at the New Museum, New York; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; PS1/MOMA, New York; the Denver Art Museum, Denver; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami and the Margulies Collection, Miami.
Her work has been included in the travelling exhibition 30 Americans organized by the Rubell Family.
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ZSOLT BODONI
Remastered
10 November-22 December 2011
Opening: 10 November, 19.00-21.00
Brand New Gallery is pleased to present Remastered, Hungarian artist Zsolt Bodoni's first solo exhibition in Italy.
Bodoni's works analyse how authority uses images to reinforce its status and for propaganda purposes. Returning to ancient subjects, more precisely the female nude and the equestrian statue, Bodoni explores the monumental iconography of dark beauty, the recycling of heroes in parallel with the rise and fall of empires and regimes, and the power struggles which have often led to the recovery of status symbols and ornaments. Ancient sculpture is not so far from the mortal divinities of our modern celebrity culture and these images which are so familiar to us often evolve within new meanings. Rooted in ancient times and reborn through art history these symbols of love, beauty and power have achieved their full circle or reincarnation. By exposing his archetypes to a cycle of construction and destruction, Bodoni captures their metamorphosis, their regeneration. Reinterpreting key works in art history and contaminating them with elements of war, Bodoni creates cavernous rooms inhabited by horses wearing gas masks, wild animals and war machines where beauty and death, fatally linked, become constants.