Alice Channer, Jamie Isenstein, J. Parker
Valentine
April 1 - May 1,
2011
Opening reception:
Friday, April 1, 6 until 8
pm
Lisa
Cooley Fine Art is incredibly pleased to present an exhibition of work by Alice
Channer, Jamie Isenstein, and J. Parker Valentine. The show begins with a
reception on Friday, April 1 from 6 to 8 pm, and continues through May 1, 2011.
The three artists in this exhibition are united by what is missing in
their work: the body and its physical memory. Each artist renders this absence
in a range of tones, from poetically solemn to surreally comic. In some
instances the body is removed or substituted, while in others it is suggested as
the elusive site of memory and sensation. Additionally, the artists deftly
transpose sculpture with a given formal practice – textiles, performance
art, and drawing, respectively. They each present sculpture that locates itself
partially beyond the materials of its apparent constitution and perception.
While the exhibition is unified by what is absent, what is materially present
creates a lush yet subtle dissonance.
In her sculptures,
drawings, and installations, British artist Alice Channer utilizes fashion,
textiles, and a variety of sartorial elements as a discursive articulation of
corporeal conditions and their relation to perception. Her installations are
often elegantly minimal while being sensorily effusive. Echoing
Minimalism’s emphasis on formal clarity, these restrained works –
elastic fabric stretched around ellipses suggesting pairs of expanding or
contracting bodily forms, coated aluminum resembling an elastic waistband,
tracings of a reptilian patterned skirt - point to the space around the
materials and the viewer’s bodily presence within it. As the viewers are
being asked to figuratively put themselves in the work, the works are
simultaneously dressing the architecture of the exhibition space. Within
Channer’s oeuvre, materials are not only a contemplation of the bodies
they suggest, but also a tactile iteration of Proustian memory.
Similarly, the work
of J. Parker Valentine exhibits a tension between spare, elegant forms and
fragments of abstraction. Her multidisciplinary work has at its performative
center the act of drawing. Whether sculpture, film, photography, or collage, the
works are often imbued with the personal gesture, trace, and weightlessness of
drawing. The elemental act of mark and erasure is the generative process for
works that delicately reside in physical and symbolic interstices, caught in an
eternal in-between. Frequently utilizing found materials; she collapses the
distance between sculpture and drawing into a lyrical indeterminacy. Sculptural
‘vessels’ – bottomless forms that can not physically hold
anything - are casually displayed, forming intricate compositional lines, while
also metaphorically funneling memory, and by extension time. For Valentine, the
works retain the origin of their creation: the body and its ability to serve as
a palimpsest of
experience.
In the uncanny work
of Jamie Isenstein, portions of the artist’s body are literally present or
absent within the sculpture, and in the latter case there is often a sign
reading ‘Will Return’ to let the viewer know. Blurring the line
between sculpture and performance, her surreal and playful works - frequently
using a Vaudevillian sense of entertainment - are underlined by issues relating
to the impermanence of time, the possibility of magic in a technologically
automated society, and death which is always looming, sometimes in the
foreground and in a stylish top hat. The viewer is implicated in these
humorously sinister works, even when it feels like they are arriving late to the
mise-en-scène, encountering an open flame in lieu of a protagonist.
Alice Channer was
born in 1977 in Oxford, England and currently lives and works in London. She
received her BA from Goldsmiths College, London and an MA in Sculpture at the
Royal College of Art. Her work is included in the Tate Collection, London, and
she was most recently shown in a two-person presentation at Independent in New
York. She has a current solo show at The Approach, London and past solo shows at
The Approach and World Class Boxing in Miami, both 2009. She has a forthcoming
solo show at Bolte Lang, Zurich in 2011, and was recently included in group
exhibitions at Raven Row, London, in 2010 and Hayward Gallery touring, UK, in
2009.
J. Parker Valentine
was born in Austin, Texas in 1980 and currently lives and works in Austin and
New York City. She received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and an
MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She recently had solo shows at Taka
Ishii Gallery, Kyoto Japan, Supportico Lopez, Berlin and Peep-Hole in Milan, all
in 2010. She was recently included in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts
Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Austin Museum of Art, among others. She
will be the subject of a forthcoming publication by
Mousse.
Jamie Isenstein was
born in Portland, Oregon in 1975. She currently lives and works in New York
City. She received her BA from Reed College and an MFA from Columbia University
in 2004. She was recently included in the Liverpool Biennial and Marina
Abramovic Presents at the Manchester International Festival. She has had solo
shows at the Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles in 2007, Andrew Kreps Gallery,
New York in 2007 and 2010, and Michael Benevento Gallery, Los Angeles in
2010.
Image
credit: Alice Channer, Look, 2010, cast and powder-coated
aluminum, each part: 30 x 15 x 4 cm. Courtesy of the artist and The Approach,
London.
Lisa
Cooley
---
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