City College MFA Group Show
August 1 through 22nd, 2013
One Art Space Gallery
23 Warren Street (between Church and Broadway)
Opening Reception August 1, 6-9 pm.
One Art Space is pleased to present the 2013 City College MFA graduates in an exhibition that showcases their artwork publicly together for the first time. The exhibition is organized by curators Blake Ruehrwein and Stephanie Crawford, and by One Art Space Gallery.
The artists included in the exhibition are: Sasha Cohen, Andrea Coronil, Gayla Martin, Shannon McBride, Katie Simpson Spain, and Alison White. The artists attended The City College of New York Studio Art MFA program, graduating in the spring of 2013. Each artist manipulates environment and media differently, but when combined together, their work creates a dialogue based on viewer interaction and exploration of environments.
Sasha Cohen, Gayla Martin and Alison White play with the idea of hanging and draping in unique ways to explore space. Cohen’s paintings become three dimensional objects with the inclusion of fabric and her manipulation of the surface, while Martin’s hanging thread sculptures act more like simple line drawings that portray an intimate attention to detail. White’s fabric sculptures create complex compositions that evoke a sense of beautiful, yet ordered chaos.
Shannon McBride, Katie Simpson Spain, and Andrea Coronil utilize space in order to invite the viewer to interact with their work. McBride creates sculptures that at first seem familiar, and later reveal themselves to be oddly unexpected. It is only with close inspection that the viewer is able to notice their distortions of reality. Simpson Spain, on the other hand, creates invitingly warm spaces that remind the viewer of past experiences: camping trips, Girl Scout troops, late nights, and explorations. Coronil’s work creates iconic images, such as that of a boxer, and imbues them with personal meaning that is both transparent and layered.
Through exploration and interaction with the work, the artists hope to provide the viewer with a sense of playful inquisitiveness, a reminder of past experiences, and an intimate attention to detail.
The curators celebrate and admire each of the artists and their work. This exhibition is a launching pad for both the artists’ and the curators’ at this stage in their careers. The curators have graduated and are working on Masters in Art History at the City College of New York.
Visit One Art Space at: http://www.oneartspace.com/
Katie Simpson Spain (say it again). 