BEACON, NY.- Fridman Gallery announces SHAPESHIFT, an exhibition at its Beacon location gathering together new and recent work across media by artists living and working in the Hudson Valley.
What is at the edge of abstraction and representation? When we blur the line between these two points, what forms are possible? The works in this exhibition oscillate between being recognizable as functional objects and evading definition. The artists in SHAPESHIFT uncover new possibilities through deconstructing and recoding the various relationships among nature, architecture, and our bodies.
Jill Barroffs sculptures and works on paper create complex, diverse outcomes from the simple tasks of rearranging table tops, legs and corners, and cutting, folding and floating painted shapes. Often furniture-like and made from unexpected materials such as concrete, Gordon Hall uses materiality in abstracted floor-based sculptures to call their use and their potential user into question.
Natalie Beall references toys, storage devices, grids, and hooks in her cut paper collages and mixed media sculptures, seeking to unleash the latent potential of the traditionally undervalued domestic sphere. Screwed directly into the wall, Christina Tenaglias sculptures made of wood, earthenware, and paint are untitled, focusing our attention on the presence of the objects, the relationships between them, and the spaces they inhabit.
Ellen Driscolls works on paper incorporate ink, golf leaf, and silk, overlaying plant life and celestial bodies with architectural forms reflecting remediation, migration, and climate change. Susan Meyers brightly colored multi-faceted acrylic sculptures echo the psychedelic tones and architectural pursuits of utopian communities of the 1960s and 70s, exploring the tension between the environment and the manufactured world.