January 5 – February 4, 2012
Opening reception: Thursday, January 5, 6-8pm
Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to present hopscotch, the first solo exhibition of works by Martha Clippinger. The gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, 6th floor and is open Tuesday thorough Saturday, 11:00am – 6:00pm. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, January 5th.
Inspired at once by Southern vernacular artistic practices and geometric abstraction, Georgia-born Clippinger resourcefully combines wood scraps, fabrics, and other found materials to create colorful objects that reside somewhere between painting and sculpture. Inherent imperfections of her reclaimed materials provide a rich framework for playful constructions characterized by wonky geometries and irregular symmetries. Clippinger’s installation engages the wall and the surrounding architecture so that the viewer must actively look in order to discover the works.
In his essay for the accompanying catalogue, poet Urayoán Noel describes Clippinger’s work as “playfully gregarious and profoundly introspective, an experiential art that blurs the boundaries between unit and series, and between being apart from and a part of ...making us aware of our own quirky modes of perception and sensation. As in hopscotch, the art is in the play, or rather in the interplay between bodies, things, and places.”
Martha Clippinger received her M.F.A. from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Since 2008 she has run The Dirty Dirty, an alternative art space in Brooklyn. In 2009 Clippinger received the Nadine Goldsmith Artist’s Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center and from 2010 to 2011 she participated in The Space Program through the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation.
For further information contact miles manning at 212 463-9666.