Paint Me Sculpturly

Benché divergano per presentazione, pratica e mezzi espressivi, gli artisti condividono un costante interesse per una pittura fuori di sé, che alteri le nostre aspettative visive e che trovi uno spazio tra il pittorico e lo scultoreo.

Comunicato stampa

La Galleria Artopia presenta un’esposizione collettiva, intitolata “Paint Me Sculpturly”, che riunisce opere di Martha Clippinger, Magnus Pettersen, Carolyn Salas e Jelena Tomasevic, a cura di Boshko Boskovic.
Benché divergano per presentazione, pratica e mezzi espressivi, gli artisti condividono un costante interesse per una pittura fuori di sé, che alteri le nostre aspettative visive e che trovi uno spazio tra il pittorico e lo scultoreo.
L’ ambiguità delle opere selezionate deriva da una visione specifica del dipinto, che non è definita dal suo essere un’ immagine, ma dal suo apparire come una superficie materiale o un rilievo. Gli artisti lo sviluppano a tutti i livelli, utilizzando una vasta gamma di materiali e fondali.
Legno, metallo, cemento e parti di opere smontate sono ricombinati e messi in relazione gli uni con gli altri secondo strategie che non sono né puramente pittoriche né scultorie. Da un punto di vista sia storico che formale, gli artisti sono impegnati in una stratificazione di costruzioni che derivano direttamente dal corpus delle loro opere ponendo come obiettivo la valorizzazione del processo di creazione artistica.
Oltre a creare da sé i propri metodi di lavoro, le loro pratiche artistiche dialogano con la storia della pittura e della scultura, impiegando in modo giocoso svariati lessici formali, dall’Avanguardia Russa al Minimalismo.
Martha Clippinger coniuga le imperfezioni intrinseche dei suoi materiali per creare opere ricche di colore dalla qualità ruvida, appena sgrezzata, caratterizzate da un’estetica dell’improvvisazione. Le sue costruzioni composte di geometrie eccentriche e simmetrie irregolari sono modeste quanto a proporzioni, ma occupano uno spazio che va oltre quello delle loro dimensioni fisiche. Clippinger gioca con l’architettura per creare installazioni fuori dal comune che richiedono che lo spettatore guardi in modo attivo per poter scoprire le opere. Attraverso il processo di intuizione dell’artista e lo scontro con quello dei visitatori, Clippinger esplora le modalità di percezione e sensazione.
In vivace dialogo con il Costruttivismo sovietico ed altri movimenti d’avanguardia che fondono arte e design con intenti idealistici, Magnum Pettersen costruisce semplici forme in calcestruzzo che possono essere assemblate e smontate a piacimento, realizzando il perfetto connubio tra forma e funzione. Iniettando colori brillanti nel freddo e pesante calcestruzzo, Pettersen reintroduce la soggettività, la casualità e la decorazione nella sua arte, privilegiando gli aspetti empirici della texture, dei colori e dei materiali contro i diktat puristi e antidecorativi del modernismo.
Lavorando con cemento, ceramica, resina da scultura e vetroresina Carolyn Salas seleziona e produce materiali per creare opere che non sono unicamente installazione, dipinto o scultura, ma incarnano aspetti di tutti e tre i mezzi espressivi. I suoi dipinti su scala ridotta combinano pigmenti di colore, cemento e gesso. Salas scrive, a proposito del proprio lavoro: “Con laborioso mestiere ed un tocco di artigianalità, sono esposte le imperfezioni e le qualità umane degli oneri, dei fallimenti e delle conquiste del nostro quotidiano.”
La nuova serie di dipinti di Jelena Tomasevic è un gruppo di opere eseguite su acciaio. Riflettendo sull’assurdo, sulla violenza, sulla solitudine e sull’alienazione, l’artista rappresenta scene frammentate in una sequenza non lineare su uno sfondo completamente bianco realizzato mediante una speciale tecnica pittorica. La gran parte dei personaggi non ha alcuna espressione facciale: una metafora dell’apatia umana, in correlazione con il modo di vivere proprio della nostra ipercompetitiva società dei consumi. La sua ispirazione scaturisce dalla sua vasta collezione di fotografie provenienti da varie fonti, quali riviste di moda, archivi personali e scatti casuali di vedute. La sua visione pittoricamente periferica degli atti del genere umano agisce come una sorgente di memoria, richiamando alla mente quanto vi è di comico, insensato, sensuale e brutale.
Press release
Artopia Gallery presents a group exhibition, entitled Paint Me Sculpturly which brings together works by Martha Clippinger, Magnus Pettersen, Carolyn Salas and Jelena Tomasevic curated by Boshko Boskovic. While disparate in their presentation, practice and media the artists share an abiding interest in painting beside itself, altering our visual expectations and finding a space which resides between the painterly and the sculptural.

The ambiguity of the selected works result from a specific view of painting which is not defined by its being a picture, but by appearing as a material surface or a relief. The artists play out on all kinds of planes employing a wide range of materials and grounds. Wood, metal, cement and parts of disassembled works are recombined and related to one another in approaches that are neither purely painterly nor sculptural. From a formal as well as a historical perspective all the artists engage in a layering of constructions resulting directly from their process oriented oeuvre. Aside from creating their own working methods, their diverse practices inadvertently address the history of painting and sculpture by playfully engaging different formal vocabularies from the Russian Avant-garde to Minimalism.
Martha Clippinger embraces the inherent imperfections of her materials to create colorful works that have a ‘rough around the edges’ quality and an improvisational aesthetic. Her constructions, composed of off-kilter geometries and irregular symmetries, are modest in scale but occupy a space beyond their physical dimensions. Clippinger plays with architecture to create unconventional installations that require the viewer to actively look in order to discover the works. Through both her intuitive process and the viewers’ encounters, Clippinger explores modes of perception and sensation.

In a lively dialogue with Soviet constructivism and other avant-garde movements that merged art and design for idealistic purposes, Magnus Pettersen builds simple forms made of concrete that can be assembled and disassembled at will, realizing the perfect marriage of form and function. By injecting cheerful colors into the cold and heavy concrete, Pettersen re-introduces subjectivity, randomness and decoration into his art, privileging the experiential effects of texture, colors and materials over the purist and anti-decorative dictates of modernism.

Working with cement, ceramic, aqua resin and fiber-glass, Carolyn Salas selects and fabricates material to create works that are not installation, painting, or sculpture alone, but embody aspects of all three mediums. Her small-scale paintings are handcrafted sculptural reliefs which combine colored pigment, cement and hydrocal. Salas writes the following about her own work: “With laborious craft and a handmade touch, the imperfections and human attributes of burdens, failures and achievements of our everyday are exposed.”
The new series of paintings by Jelena Tomasevic is a group of work executed on steel. Reflecting on the absurd, violence, loneliness and alienation, the artist represents fragmented scenes in a non-linear sequence on a blank white background implemented through a special painting technique. Most characters lack any facial expressions, a metaphor for human numbness, a correlation to the mode of life in our highly competitive consumerist society. Her inspiration springs from a vast photography collection from various sources such as fashion magazines, personal archives and random photos of sights. Her painterly peripheral vision of the humankind acts as a source of remembrance calling to mind the humorous, pointless, sensual and brutal.
Martha Clippinger received her BA in Art History from Fordham University (2005) and her MFA in Visual Arts from Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University (2008). Her work has been written about in The Brooklyn Rail, The Huffington Post, and Hyperallergic. She is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (2013), Edward F. Albee Foundation (2013), Atlantic Center for the Arts (2012), and Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation (2010). Clippinger has been selected to participate in the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2014 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts in New York. Clippinger is a Fulbright-Garcia Robles grantee in Painting who is currently living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is represented by Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York.

Magnus Pettersen lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark and is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Arts. Exhibitions include: Concrete Island, Rooster Gallery, New York, Collapse, 2 person show with Rasmus Hoj Mygind, Peter Amby Gallery, Copenhagen, Mind in Matter, Peter Amby Gallery, CopenhagenParallel Worlds(the world as it is and the world as it could be), Not Quite, Fengersfors, Sweden, FOKUS, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark, MUDshow #2 – ((There`s no Place like Home)), Oslo, Norway, Goldener Kentaur, Münchner Künstlerhaus, Munich, Germany, Components and Connections, 2 person show with Maria Lenskjold, Udstillingsstedet Q, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Carolyn Salas was born in Hollywood, California. Salas earned a B.F.A in sculpture from College of Santa Fe in 1999 and an M.F.A from CUNY Hunter College in 2005. She has exhibited at museums including The Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY, The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA, Urbis City Center, Manchester, UK, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA. Notable gallery exhibitions include Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY; Casey Kaplan, New York, NY; Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL; Gallery Nordine Zidoun, Luxembourg and Parisian Laundry, Montreal. She has participated in artist residency programs at Abrons Art Center, AIR space program, NY, NARS Foundation, NY, Fountainhead, FL, among others. Salas most recently completed a solo show at Dodge Gallery and a site specific installation for Francis Greenberger’s Time Equities, Art-in-Buildings in New York. Salas lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She was appointed lecturer in sculpture at Yale in 2011.

Jelena Tomasevic is a painter who lives and works in Montenegro. Selected solo exhibitions include: Apparent Servitude, Artopia Gallery, Milano, Italy & Center for Contemporary art Podgorica, Montenegro, Just Kidding, Video, Gallery Thrust Projects, New York ; Now That We Have Gone As Far As We Can Go….” Galerie Conrads, Dusseldorf, Germany, Buero.DC, Cologne, Germany ,curated by Susanne Prinz, Joy of Life II, Thrust Projects, New York. Group exhibitions include: Crossing, National Centre for Contemporary Art, St Petersburg, Russia, Multipla Market, Handel Street Project, London, UK, Free Port of Art, Gender Check, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2010) & MUMOC Museum, Wien, Austria (2009).
Boshko Boskovic is the Program Director of Residency Unlimited, a New York based non-profit arts service organization whose mission is to support artists and curators in residency. Additionally he works at the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and has curated exhibitions such as Not So Distant Memory, CAA, New York, Power of the Brand, Contemporary Art Museum in Banja Luka, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Bite A Bunny for a Day, Exhibition 211, New York, New Paintings – Aleksandra Popovic, MC Gallery, New York, Video Integration, Belef, Belgrade, Performing Body, Marina Abramovic, Speed Art Museum, Louisville. During his tenure as Associate Director at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York he also worked closely with artists such as Los Carpinteros, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov and Johan Grimonprez. Boskovic has also published essays for solos exhibitions such as Where Have All the Children Gone, Galerie Steinek, Vienna, Dark Star, Galerie Perpetuel, Frankfurt, Cinematic Sculptures, KCB, Belgrade, Beyond the Magic Mountain, MC Gallery, New York.