FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Allyson Vieira
Ozymandias
April 2 – May 9, 2010
Opening Reception, April 2, 6-8pm
Laurel Gitlen (Small A Projects) is pleased to present Allyson Vieira in her first solo exhibition at the gallery, Ozymandias.
The main gallery will contain 18 blocks carved from a single mass of poured plaster and concrete bounded by drywall.
The dimensions of these works, If I was a... but then again, no (1-18), are determined both by standard construction dimensions (4 x 8 feet) and by the dimensions of the artist’s body.
Thus each piece carries the potential for a figurative sculpture.
The surfaces of the blocks are visibly marked by the processes of extricating them from the cast solid; ochre rust from the cross-cut logging saw, deep channels from a hammer drill, holes from screws, clefts from levers, and the intricate tracery of a Sawzall are all evident on the discrete carved faces.
Vieira investigates history as a succession of empires and legacies, mythologies and mutations. More specifically, she takes as her subject the enduring object-record that is repeatedly relocated, copied, re-animated and canonized. Informed as much by the ancient pyramid builders as power tools, the artist approaches her work as a form of industrial production that questions the relationship of matter, material and form.
She locates the slippery instant when raw material transforms into form, suggesting that any extant form is simultaneously new material, pregnant with the potential of a yet unknown other form. Vieira poses the question, “perhaps history, as well as material, can be re-used in this way — re-inhabiting without replicating?”
The exhibition takes its title, Ozymandias, from the ancient Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, as well as the title of a sonnet by Percy Shelley, invoking at least three distinct “empires.”
Percy’s poem was inspired by the storied acquisition of a colossal statue of Ramesses II by the British Museum in 1816, and thus handily alludes to both object and empire.
In the rear gallery, flanked by two bas-reliefs, lurks a live octopus in a cylindrical tank.
Allyson Vieira lives and works in New York.
Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Brown Gallery in London, AMP in Athens, and Laurel Gitlen (Small A Projects), Rental and Deitch Projects in New York. She received an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School at Bard College and a BFA from the Cooper Union.
Her work will also be included in Knight’s Move, an upcoming exhibition at SculptureCenter that opens in May 2010.
Please contact the gallery for more information or images.
