The Directors of Marlborough Chelsea are pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition by the acclaimed sculptor and installation artist, Steven Siegel. This is Siegel’s first exhibition with Marlborough and will open on Thursday, Janurary 27th with a reception for the artist from 6-8pm. The exhibition will continue through Saturday, February 26th.
For more than thirty years, Siegel has built a body of work that varies significantly in scale, though consistently reflects his ecological concerns through the use of non-traditional materials. In a number of outdoor works such as Big Rift, 2009 at the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA and Bridge 2, 2009 at Arte Sella, Italy, Siegel seamlessly integrates multiple tons of recycled paper amongst trees, bushes and fallen leaves, prompting the viewer to reconsider the identity and origin of these materials. In other works such as Two of ‘em, 2009 at Penn State Berks in Reading, PA in which the artist bound thousands of aluminum cans in two cylindrical bamboo structures, Siegel places environmentally-threatening materials into pastoral landscapes, though in an aesthetically-pleasing and harmless manner. In each of these works, the artist simultaneously questions human’s rate of consumption and our commitment to preserving the natural environment.
In this exhibition the artist will install Biography, 2008-2010, a monumental wall-mounted sculpture over seventy-five feet long that will encompass the entire second-floor gallery. Comprised of thousands of various everyday discarded items, the work continuously changes form and composition evoking an array of physical and conceptual influences. In the essay “Of Our Time” included in the catalogue for the exhibition, Dr. Suzaan Boettger describes the work:
…in addition to the visual pleasure offered by Siegel’s Biography is its illuminating fulfillment of Henri Damier’s
nineteenth-century modernist credo, ONE MUST BE OF ONE’S TIME. Through his Biography, Siegel channels the
cultural consciousness of our early twenty-first century. It is made visible in the implication running through its
intricate design that all is connected, yet in flux.
In recent years, Siegel’s work has been featured in a number of exhibitions at museum and university galleries around the world, including Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey; the Kunsthverin Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany; Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; and the University of Florida, Ganesville, FL.
An illustrated catalogue will be available at the time of the exhibition.
For additional information or press inquries please call Eric Gleason at 212-463-8634.