ASPEN, CO.- Marianne Boesky Gallery and Carpenters Workshop Gallery announced the continuation of their collaborative summer exhibition series in Aspen, Colorado. Titled Material Alchemy, the two-part exhibition features a co-curated thematic selection of works from each gallery’s respective program of artists. The exhibition allows for unique artistic dialogues that extend across the realms of art and design, including artists who explore ideas of materiality and process in their work. Following Material Alchemy Part I, on view June 30 – July 23, Material Alchemy Part II will be on view August 2 – September 3 at a seasonal gallery location at 601 East Hyman Avenue.
Material Alchemy Part II explores the radical effect the Italian Arte Povera movement had on art and design, exhibiting artworks that reject material hierarchies, demonstrate a formal honesty, and generate a new hybrid natural-industrial language. Bridging a gap between the found and the made, exhibited artists use raw and unprocessed materials to forge an immediate connection between viewer and object.
Marianne Boesky Gallery’s presentation will center around recent work by Pier Paolo Calzolari, who is recognized as one of the pioneering figures of the Arte Povera movement, alongside works by The Haas Brothers, Jay Heikes, and Suzanne McClelland. While Calzolari uses crude organic materials such as salt, shells, tempera, rose petals, and natural pigments, Suzanne McClelland wields sound and acoustics to create a visual language. Her large-scale paintings can include glitter, polymers, graphite, dry pigments, and chalk and are infused with social commentary, underscoring the way in which language itself is politicized by its context. While McClelland’s abstract onomatopoeic works experiment with the way sound is translated by our bodies, materializing the immaterial, Jay Heikes takes a more philosophical approach with his cosmic oil paintings that are borne out of the his fascination with evolutionary processes such as regeneration, stasis, and corrosion. Working with sustainably-sourced furs and cast bronze, The Haas Brothers’s beasts explore aesthetic themes related to nature and science fiction. Embodying the Haas Brothers’s keen attention to biomorphic design, each peculiar and fantastical creature is first a hand-carved clay sculpture before being cast in bronze.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery will highlight works by Vincenzo De Cotiis, including several new works from his Interlude collection, featuring forms combining recycled fiberglass and stromatolite, an ancient stone. The Italian artist has a natural affinity with the principles of Arte Povera, elevating humble materials beyond their usual function. Additional artists exhibited include Maarten Baas, The Campana Brothers, Nacho Carbonell, Stuart Haygarth, Ika Kuenzel, Kostas Lambridis, Martin Laforet, Wonmin Park, Giacomo Ravagli, Atelier Van Lieshout, and Susannah Weaver.
