Laura Splan, Collaboration With The Sun #03
(re)create Residency Award Exhibition At Whitebox Art Center on
February 17, 2015
Reception from 2-7pm with moderated discussion at 6pm
New York, NY — January 25, 2015 — (re)-create, a new, non-profit arts
organization, is pleased to announce an exhibit of work by the recipients of its
first artist’s residency, Laura Splan (www.laurasplan.com) and Ève K. Tremblay
(www.evektremblay.com). (re)create’s mission is to support work that
synthesizes “art, sustainability, cultural & personal renewal” and those who make
it. Thrown into the Idaho wilderness on the shores of Hayden Lake in Kootenai
County, the artists spent two weeks in a rustic camp setting with no requirement
other than to leave a “trace” of their experiences, a selection of which will be on
view at Whitebox Art Center (329 Broome St., New York, NY) this February!
Splan’s works on paper and video present a retooling of Surrealist automatic
drawings. During her residency, she constructed drawing instruments using
found charcoal, twigs, and string attached to solar-powered motors. Pieces of
charcoal salvaged from the campfire were moved across paper by the motor
vibrations. The clumsy, iterative movements created abstract marks easily
mistaken for those of a human hand. The chalky compositions materialize the
ephemeral forces of nature. “Collaboration” within the project emerges where
chance, idiosyncrasies, and arbitrary parameters collide. Timing and placement
became the marks of the artist, while technical glitches and fluctuations in
sunlight became the unique gestural marks of the instruments.
Tremblay takes a more personal approach. Based on an invented family magic
bird mythology, pyrometric cones normally used inside her father’s ceramic kilns
to monitor temperature are staged in a series of mini ephemeral land art
installations entitled Suite cone pyrometriques. Unfired the cones are straight and
colored, once fired they melt in different shapes and turn white. Photographed
they find evocative shapes and new roles as sculptural objects, forming scenes
of a larger project Tremblay calls Madeleines minerales, a Proustian body of
work including fired and unfired ceramic pieces and photographs.
(re)create happily invites you to this double journey through imaginary Idahoan
landscapes, guided by an artist talk at 6pm, February 17, 2015.
