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| Anne Sherwood Pundyk, "Self-taught," 2013, 63" x 60", Oil and Acrylic on Linen |
PRESS RELEASE
October 21, 2013
October 21, 2013
STADIA: New Work by Anne Sherwood Pundyk
November 7 – December 31, 2013
Opening: November 7, 6–8 pm
Susan Eley Fine Art
917.952.7641
or email: susie@susaneleyfineart.com
GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday – Thursday, 11 – 5 pm and
by appointment
Susan Eley Fine Art is pleased to present
“Stadia,” a solo exhibition of works by Anne Sherwood Pundyk. This personal
work was made concurrently with the artist’s participation in several large,
collaborative and site-specific projects. Pundyk’s new body of work was shaped
by these recent experiences outside her studio, engaging directly with other
artists and her audience. Working within expanded formats -- in academic
settings and private galleries, a public commercial space and through
co-creating a feminist art publication – underscored for the artist the
importance of defining her own position. Most importantly, asserting and
testing her ideas on these platforms confirmed where her subjective voice
connected to a collective consciousness. A short profile of the artist,
produced by The Tribeca Film Institute, shows her recent studio and
installation work (Link to video here).
In “Stadia” over 25 works will be shown including
oil paintings on linen and paper, watercolor and collage on paper, video, books
and a gallery-specific installation. In the larger works, Pundyk transmits her
experience within a painterly proscenium; her angular unbroken applications of
paint frame layered, avian brushstrokes of saturated color. Embedded in the
overlaid string of figuratively intended images within each painting are the
artist’s own essential stories. Pundyk’s hunch that these narratives merge with
older, archetypal stories was confirmed in her collaborative projects. For
example in “Rapunzel in the Library,” at Queens College Art Center in 2012, she
lead 22 other artists, writers, and performers in a contemporary retelling to
the fairytale.
Two site-specific projects honed Pundyk’s
studio practice by bringing the artist’s engagement with her audience to the forefront:
“Parallax Painting,” at Panepinto Galleries in Jersey City, in 2012, and this
year’s “RENTED WORLD,” at the Mave Hotel in Manhattan. Critic Charles Kessler
observed about “Parallax Painting, “By creating a wallpaper-like background for
her paintings, Pundyk transformed this large, Chelsea-style space into a
congenial environment — a more private, almost residential, space that allows
you to slowly savor this rich work.” In contrast, her installation, “RENTED
WORLD,” situated in a “non-art” mid-town commercial space challenged the status
quo. According to cultural theorist, Viola K. Timm, when walking by Pundyk’s
unexpected, glass enclosed, prismatic arrangement of paintings, “…The passerby
encounters the supplemental form of her or his own shadow, setting off the
childhood monsters of the modern “rented” world.” Most recently, Pundyk has
co-created with multi-disciplined artist Bianca Casady of the musical duo,
CocoRosie, a new feminist arts magazine, “Girls Against God,” (published by
Capricious .) Through
this collaboration, she has further strengthened her intuitive powers by selecting and presenting
stories and artwork that challenge restrictive and destructive social
structures.
In this exhibition at SEFA, Pundyk explores
the nuances of her visual vocabulary in smaller works
on paper. Blue and white watercolors of female figures from her “Bodily Fluids”
series respond to core feelings such as vulnerability, disorientation, joy or
relief. Pundyk’s book-page paintings layer found
and
original typewritten text and watercolor imagery over white washed pages from a
contemporary novel. The artist’s “Adoptions” watercolor series isolates a dual
framework (derived from the structures created in “RENTED WORLD”) suggesting
the changeability of her audience’s perspective. Pundyk’s found photographic
source material is reworked for her videos. For this exhibition, her video
piece, “Object Classification,” a vintage trio of black and white monitors
silently transmits three concurrent loops of original content. “Remember” a
book made from a whitewashed road atlas -- a pre-smartphone relic -- is a
yearlong meditation on the force defining the stage of Modernism: nuclear
power.
Curator Helen A. Harrison wrote in a Guild
Hall Museum catalogue essay in 1988 “…[Pundyk’s] work suggests that understanding
requires another interpretive tool, or perhaps a personal surrender to a
deeper, less accessible, level of cognition.” Since then, over the last 25
years, the artist has developed her practice, showing her work internationally.
Recent exhibitions include Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy; The
Wand Gallery, Berlin, Germany; The Meltdown Festival, London, England; MoMA
Library, New York, NY; Panepinto Galleries, Jersey City, NJ; The Brucennial
2012, New York, NY; Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Queens
College Art Center, New York, NY; Fordham University, New York, NY; Exit Art,
New York, NY; Susan Eley Fine Art, New York; NY, Art Miami, Miami, FL; The
Philoctetes Center, New York; NY; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;
and Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA. This fall,
with “GAG,” she was invited by Creative Time and The Brooklyn Museum to
perform as part of Suzanne Lacy’s large scale feminist project, “Between the Door
and the Street;” and the launch of the 2nd issue of GAG
will be held at MoMA PS1 this coming January.
Pundyk’s work is included in corporate,
institutional and private collections here and abroad including Luciano Benetton
Foundation, Milan Italy; Equity Residental, New York, NY; Barclay’s Bank, New
York, NY; State Street Bank, Boston, MA; Glamorise Foundations, Inc., New York,
NY; television journalist, Katie Couric, York, NY; Anthony Grant, Sotheby's
Contemporary Art, Rye, NY; and the late painter Cy Twombly, Rome, Italy. She
has taught at Fordham University and lectured at Printed Matter, Manhattan
Marymount College, Sotheby's Art Institute; and at Washington & Lee
University in Lexington, VA. She was granted The William Steeple Davis
Fellowship, a year-long painting residency in Orient, NY. In addition to
editorial role in “Girls Against God,” Pundyk is a freelance art writer and
curator; contributing to The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, ArtUS, Broadway +
Thresher and she maintains a blog about contemporary art. She hold a BA in Fine
Art from Pomona College, Claremont, CA and an MFA in painting from RISD.
Events related to the exhibition
to be held in the gallery include:
November
11, 6-8 pm. A group discussion of current feminist issues related to “Girls Against God,” with co-editors
Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Bianca Casady and others from the magazine.
PLEASE NOTE: CHANGE OF DATE AND TIME. DRINKOLLAGE WILL TAKE PLACE ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10TH, 6:30 - 9:30
December 10, 6:30-9:30 pm. Group collage-making event in association with DRINKOLLAGE. DRINKOLLAGE began in the fall of 2011 with a group of friends, a stack of magazines, scissors, glue, and some cans of Coors Lite. It has since developed into a semi-regular gathering of artists and friends who make collages together and drink beer. In May of 2013 we published the first issue of our zine, and launched the second volume in September 2013 at the New York Art Book Fair. DRINKOLLAGE is brought to you by Jamie Gaul and Rachael Morrison.
PLEASE NOTE: CHANGE OF DATE AND TIME. DRINKOLLAGE WILL TAKE PLACE ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10TH, 6:30 - 9:30
December 10, 6:30-9:30 pm. Group collage-making event in association with DRINKOLLAGE. DRINKOLLAGE began in the fall of 2011 with a group of friends, a stack of magazines, scissors, glue, and some cans of Coors Lite. It has since developed into a semi-regular gathering of artists and friends who make collages together and drink beer. In May of 2013 we published the first issue of our zine, and launched the second volume in September 2013 at the New York Art Book Fair. DRINKOLLAGE is brought to you by Jamie Gaul and Rachael Morrison.
