HUNTINTON, N.Y.-In Vernita Nemec’s Endless Junkmail Scroll, the viewer is confronted with a tapestry of textures and symbolic meanings: the artist’s answer to all that junk mail we receive that tries to convince us to borrow money, open more charge accounts or accept services we don’t need. The 100 foot artwork is also a creative reflection on the information overload and complexity of life in 21st century America. In conjunction with the exhibition, Nemec will present an adaptation of a new performance first presented at the Pompidou Centre in Paris on Saturday June 17,th at 3 PM with composer and musician Sean Carolan who has created original music for this event.

The artist’s process is ongoing in the creation of this “cutting edge” collage (with more tearing & burning than cutting). As sections of the scroll are sold (by linear inch), the scroll is closed, re-collaged and re-connected, keeping the work in constant transition. Nemec transforms the scroll for each exhibition. The scroll's torn fragments and burned edges gives the impression of an aged document, saved for posterity. The value we attach to ephemera is explored both aesthetic and philosophically in this scroll of security envelopes that the artist has 'snaked' around the gallery.

Critic Ed McCormack calls Nemec’s scroll “a defining, career-crowning achievement… Encapsulating the philosophy of aesthetic ecology that prompted her to found the Art from Detritus movement (art made from recycled materials), …it is a major statement which seems slated to extend this artist’s influence beyond the underground where it has too long languished as one of the better kept secrets of the avant-garde."

The artist created her first installation artworks in the mid-70’s, transferring fragments of notes, ideas and the detritus of her artmaking from the walls of her studio to the walls of the gallery like a giant sketch. She has continued creating these installations both as site specific works and as a backdrop for performance artworks in Mexico, Europe and the U.S. A sense of autobiography has continuously permeated Nemec’s art since an early feminist performance in which she swept the corner at Spring & Wooster Streets in Soho where she still lives and works.

Vernita Nemec aka Vernita N’Cognita has been active in the art world as visual artist, performance artist and curator since the late 1960’s when she co-curated X-12, the first feminist art show of the period, and worked with such political art organizations as Artworkers Coalition (AWC), Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), Artists Meeting for Cultural Change. In the 90’s, Nemec served as Director of Artists Talk On Art, interviewing many art world luminaries, and as independent curator at the Henry Street Settlement for the Arts. For the past decade, Nemec has been organizing and independently curating exhibitions of art made from recycled materials called “Art from Detritus.” She is currently director of Viridian Artists, a contemporary art gallery in New York City's Chelsea.

A recipient of grants from the Jerome Foundation, Artists Space, Franklin Furnace and the Field, Nemec has presented her visual and performance art in the U.S., Mexico, Hungary, Germany, France and Japan. The Endless Junkmail Scroll's next stops will be Fountain Street Gallery in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and the Schacknow Museum of Art in Plantation Florida.