Dedee Shattuck Gallery is pleased to present Articulated Structure, an exhibition of three artists examining structure through artistic media. This exhibit investigates the roots of architectural, neurological, musical, and visual form.
Jane South travels through New York City by bicycle, observing the diverse configurations of bridges, buildings, tunnels, and roadways that make up the urban landscape. South visualizes the architectural skeletons beneath the surface, bringing these impressions back to her studio where she constructs meticulously hand cut, folded, and painted paper sculptures. Her process is intuitive and focused, resulting in imaginative and compelling works that entice viewers to envision the roots of their own surroundings. The sculptures ride the line of representation and abstraction, and are homages to construction as much as to any specific reference. Surfaces are perforated with linear slices and described with the marks of an illustrator’s pen, and objects hinge and cantilever from geometric protrusions, playing with the sense of interior and exterior space and of scale.
Paul Myoda’s interactive sculptures are methodically designed to attract and surprise viewers using laser-cut acrylic, hand-machined aluminum, 3D printed plastic, LED lights, motion sensors, and electronics. His works glow, glimmer, and cast shadows that transform the works themselves and the spaces they inhabit. Myoda might be considered a sculptor of light, except that he masterfully employs a number of material and sculptural processes in each work; light and shadow are only part of what makes these works captivating. Myoda will exhibit a new chapter of his ongoing Glittering Machine series. Glittering Machine: John Bonham, 2014 represents a body of work inspired by frequency visualizations of the iconic drum sequences by Led Zeppelin drummer, John Bonham. The works are informed by Myoda’s research on synesthesia (the overlapping of two or more senses), cognitive neuroscience, and computational geometry.
Jacqueline Ott’s images are a result of an evolving system of mark making that she creates and refines through series of drawings. Working in graphite, acrylic paint, gouache and ink, Ott uses a self-defined language of color and mark making to explore variations on imagery and form. Ott’s drawings are products of systematic adaptations of logical rules made up of a taxonomic vocabulary of marks with names like “Yum Yum,” “Udo,” and “Oh.” The images have the precision of digital drawings, but are laced with evidence of a hand-done process. Ott is a master of color and line relationships. She explores hundreds of possibilities in her studio and creates harmonious compositions that flicker with occasional moments of cacophony.
This exhibit celebrates the expressions of three analytical creative minds. Each artist produces variations on explorations of the structural building blocks of a range of influences. South’s influences are primarily architectural and industrial, Myoda’s range from biological, neurological, mechanical, and in this case musical, Ott turns her focus to the building blocks of visual art itself. Together, the works converse about artistic explorations of process and data interpretation. Articulated Structure creates a dynamic discussion between three focused artistic processes, and brings together three exemplary artists whose work is as enticing as it is thought provoking
to inquire about works, please email dedeeshattuckgallery@gmail.com or call 508-636-4177.
Jane South
Born in Manchester, England, Jane South worked at as set designer in experimental theater before moving to the United States in 1989.
South had a recent solo exhibition, Floor/Ceiling at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (March – August 2013) and exhibited Shifting Structures: Stacks a large site-specific installation at the New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan (Sept. 2012 - Jan. 2013). In April 2014 she will have her fifth solo exhibition with Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NYC.
Other site-specific installations include Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA; Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Germany; the Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; and White Columns, NY. Solo exhibitions include the Queens Museum, NY; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
South’s work was included in SLASH: Paper Under the Knife at MAD (the Museum of Arts & Design), New York in 2010 and Burgeoning Geometries: Constructed Abstractions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria in 2007. Other group exhibitions include The Drawing Center, NY; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.
South’s work has been reviewed and published in The New York Times, the LA Times, ArtForum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, New York Magazine, Frieze, Art News and NY Arts Magazine.
In 2009, She was the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant and a 2010 Camargo Foundation Residency in Cassis, France. Other fellowships, grants, and residencies include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2001, 2008), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy (2008), the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH (2002, 2004) and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY (2001, 2002).
Jane South has lectured, taught, and served as artist in residence in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, Australia and India. She currently teaches in the Graduate Sculpture Department at RISD and is Associate Director of the Siena Art Institute, Siena, Italy.
"In Brooklyn I live surrounded by the remnants of nineteenth-century industrial architecture; crumbling wharves, shipping cranes, and windowless warehouses, along with the burgeoning technological infrastructures of the twenty-first century; giant satellite dishes and fiber-optic cable terminals. My work references these structures and the ways I have seen my neighborhood evolve (for better and worse) over the years. New York City in particular is de- and re-constructed so much that it exists in a constant state of undress, exposing its history through dilapidated and/or shoddily/cheaply constructed layers; a reminder of the illusory and temporary nature of the urban landscape.
Most of the work is made of paper (the larger pieces also incorporating exposed wooden structures) which is hand-cut, folded, and constructed into three-dimensional elements. For me there is an honesty in the use of paper, a direct and fundamental art-making material that has a contrary relationship to the structures referenced. The vocabulary of drawing is also a significant part of the work, a means of alluding to the transformative moment in art making wherein everyday materials shift into another realm of experience.
I would like these works to appear to waver between things: awkwardness/elegance, architecture/drawing, slight/monumental, direct/mysterious, ancient/futuristic; and to exist as states navigated in the mind–like one mentally maps the landscape of a novel–but also to be present in real, external space." - Jane South, 2014
Paul Myoda
Paul Myoda is a sculptor based in the woods of Chepachet, Rhode Island. Myoda is inspired by the underlying logic and mathematical principles of the natural world and applies them to his work with new media, technology and industrial materials. The result is compositions of light, motion, and form that find a balance and a beauty between the organic and the built. Regularly exhibited both nationally and internationally, his sculptures and installations are known for their elegance and their expression of organic forces through artificial materials and systems.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University, Myoda is recognized as an artist, designer, critic and educator. Based in NYC from 1990-2006, Myoda was represented by the Friedrich Petzel Gallery, and was cofounder of Big Room, an art production and design collective in New York City. He was also a contributor to Art in America, Flash Art and Frieze. He is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Warhol Foundation and Howard Foundation, among others. In 2001 he participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s World Views Program and had a studio on the 91st floor of WTC I. In March of 2002 he co-created the Tribute in Light in memory of the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, which has since become an annual installation. He was an adjunct professor at The City College of New York and has been an assistant professor in Brown University's Visual Art Department since 2006.
Myoda's most recent work, Glittering Machines, is a series of interactive illuminating sculptures that respond to the presence of viewers. Their design is informed by bioluminescent fauna, crystal morphology and computational geometry. An example of hybrid arts practice and cybernetic sculpture, the series bridges the disconnections and eases the anxieties of the post-industrial world through affect, presence and responsive gesture. His works are part of the collections of the Queens Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami and the Library of Congress. He has had solo exhibitions of different groups of Glittering Machines at the Dorsch Gallery in Miami, the Project 4 Gallery in Washington DC, and the Yellow Peril Gallery in Providence, RI.
"Since 2008, I have been creating a series of interactive and illuminating sculptures titled Glittering Machines. There have been several different subgroups of Glittering Machines, each examining different aspects of sculptural composition, behavioral attitude, and/or kinetic interaction. Glittering Machine: John Bonham, 2014, is the first installation of a new group of sculptures which focuses on synaesthesia -- the phenomena of overlapping sensations, and parallel frequencies between visual and aural form.
Informed in part by research on mirror neurons in cognitive neuroscience, patterning algorithms in computational geometry, and the visualization of sound vibrations in cymatics, this new series is ultimately about affecting cross-over, inexplicable and exhilarating visual-aural experiences in the viewer.
Simply put, I want to make moving sculptures.
John Bonham, the English drummer for Led Zeppelin, is often cited as one of the greatest drummers who played rock music. Rolling Stones readers named him the “best drummer of all time” in 2011. I am awed by Bonham’s inventiveness, technique and transcendent feeling for rhythm and groove.
Simply put, John Bonham rocks.
This sculptural installation, Glittering Machine: John Bonham, takes various frequency visualizations from audio recordings of John Bonham’s drum kit, and uses them as a springboard to create a new kinetic, illuminating, interactive sculptural experience.
Does one need to know any of this?
No.
Is this sculptural installation about John Bonham?
I’ll answer this with a quote from the poet Allan Grossman: “A poem is about something like a cat is about the house.”
The installation is made from lasercut acrylic and both CNC and hand machined aluminum, and its electronic components include highpower LEDs, ultrasonic sensors, Arduino microprocessors, DC fans, and custom printed circuit boards." - Paul Myoda, February, 2014
Download Paul Myoda's Glittering Machines book
Jacqueline Ott
Jacqueline Ott is an artist who lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. Born in Camden, New Jersey, Ott received a BFA from University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She was an adjunct faculty member at RISD for nine years, then left RISD to pursue full time studio work.
Her work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Philadelphia, Providence, RI, and Boston, MA. Most recently, her work was exhibited in Abu Dhabi. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fund, and three separate fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.
Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Newport Art Museum, Newport RI; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Corporate collections that include her work are Fidelity Investments, Meditech, Boston Ritz-Carlton, Dialysis Centers of Rhode Island, and Edwards and Angell, Providence RI.
"My work is abstract and self-referential. I devise a system with a fixed set of parameters that is applied to a mark or image. The image determines the system and the system opens the image to infinite variations and mutations.
I set up a defined format within which to work because it allows me to concentrate on inventing unique markings and systematic methods of configuring the marks . The work follows the logic of the system on which it is based – nothing frivolous is included. In my most recent work, marks are transformed into circles which build forms and establish the system on which the series is based.
I’m interested in the contrast between the calligraphic quality of the brush strokes and the structure on which they are hung, and the spatial and textural irregularities that occur despite the regularity with which the paint is applied. Equally important are “evidence of the hand”, economy of technique, and the delicate, ethereal quality of a thin film of paint."- Jacqueline Ott, 2014
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