NEW YORK, NY.- CUE is presenting a solo exhibition of new work by Athena LaTocha, which has been curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The show features a large-scale immersive installation of an ink-wash drawing by LaTocha that spans the entire length of the gallery. While the work depicts a landscape, its more abstract elements leave the viewer to decipher what they see.

The Project Space features a small selection of new paintings by Curator-Mentor, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, in celebration and in recognition of LaTocha and Smith's relationship.

ARTIST STATEMENT
By reducing the palette, I center the imagery on dynamic gesture and atmosphere that recall the powerful forces of nature and the human impact upon the world. My images begin with my memory of Alaska—specifically the irony between vast magnitudes of raw nature and the impact of industrial development upon nature.

I work rigorously between large and small scale. Incessant questioning and doubt play a large role in how I work in a repetitive, serial mode. Working aerially with my images on the floor, I am interested in being inside the image rather than the outside as an easel painter.

I use intuitive processes and chance operations to tear down and rebuild landscape iconographies, turning to unwieldy and unorthodox tools to assist with this approach. Tools such as cracked rocks, concrete bricks, and reclaimed automobile tire shred—which I pick up off the sides of highways—are favored over traditional painting and drawing tools. The steel radial from the tire shred literally cuts and bites through the medium and into the support, while it conceptually cuts into the metaphorical landscapes.

Athena LaTocha, born in Anchorage, Alaska in 1969, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and MFA from Stony Brook University, NY in 2007. After completing her studies, she apprenticed in bronze finishing at the Beacon Fine Art Foundry in Beacon, New York and furthered her work in printmaking at the Art Students League of New York from 2008 to 2013.

In 2013, LaTocha was the recipient of the prestigious Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva, Florida. She was also awarded a fellowship and residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and is currently artist-in-residence at chashama, Inc. in Brooklyn, New York.

Her work has been collected and exhibited by the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies, South Dakota; Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY; Alaska Native Medical Center, Anchorage, Alaska; the Chicago Bulls, Chicago, Illinois. She has exhibited at St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn; Gallery SENSEI, New York; and Wilmer Jennings Gallery, New York.