Hello,
The following event may be of interest to you:
Emilie Clark: Maxwell's Lair
Thursday, October 15, 2009 - Saturday, November 14, 2009
Morgan Lehman is pleased to present Maxwell's Lair, new paintings and installation by New York based artist Emilie Clark (MFA Alumni, Painting). This is Clark's second solo show with the gallery. Clark has long been interested in 19th Century women naturalists who defied dominant social expectations of their time. She has used their lives and practices as a point of departure in two previous series based on Mary Treat (1830-1923) and Mary Ward (1827-1869), resulting in shows based on several years of research, accumulation and creation of specimens, paintings, drawings, and sculpture.
Maxwell's Lair draws from the life and work of Martha Maxwell (1831-1881), a 19th Century American naturalist, who at the time had the largest collection of taxidermy in the US. Maxwell killed and prepared most of the animals in her collection and displayed them in naturalistic dioramas that she created. Her dedication and devotion to her work parallels that of an artist. Clark's paintings are derived from stuffed-animal hybrid sculptures she constructs, in addition to close observation of actual specimens-living, taxidermied and pickled.
"In her lacy amalgamations of follicles and egg sacs, nectar-coated tubes and ciliated lobes, distorted mouths and surgically reconstructed yard-sale castoffs Clark engages a longstanding fascination with botany and zoology, not to mention an investment in the liquid properties of water-based pigments and sculptural forms based on accumulation. But her dedication to direct observation and lyrical abstraction does not imply an exclusively formal-or sentimental-attachment to flora and fauna. Her laboratory-like habits cross-pollinate, sometimes perversely, with interests in the history of science, gender politics, and research as a conceptual art practice."
-Frances Richard "The Killing Floor".
Referencing Maxwell's 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, where she lived for the duration in a faux cave inside her own exhibit, Clark has created a small cave made of modified and dissected stuffed animals. This diorama at the entrance to the exhibition sets the mood for the rest of the show and gives viewers a chance to physically enter into her work.
Location: 317 Tenth Avenue, btw 28th & 29th Street, New York
Sponsor: Master of Fine Arts Program.
Phone: 000-000-0000
Website: http://www.morganlehmangallery.com/
If you would like to see more events please visit the following URL:
http://www.bard.edu/graduate/ccs/
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