STADIA: New Work by Anne Sherwood Pundyk

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, "Self-taught," 2013, 63" x 60", Oil and Acrylic on Linen

PRESS RELEASE                                                                     
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  

46 West 90th Street, 2nd Floor

New York, NY
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 2^nd 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.