MELTED MOMENT MID SIP
4/5-9/16 2022
Opening Reception: 4/5 6-9 pm
Cleo the Gallery is pleased to present Melted Moment Mid Sip with work by artists Lauren Carly Shaw, Sophia Belkin, Katerine
Dennie-Marcoux, and Chad Austin. This exhibition features surreal landscapes and psychedelic combinations of analogies.
Through her stretched fiber pieces, Belkin combines fabric scraps with heavy stitching done through a CNC embroidery machine. The scraps include past experiments in textural explorations through dyeing, as well as photos printed on polyester and chiffon of growth in her garden and scenes around her neighborhood that were taken during lockdown. The randomness of pulling pieces from a pile that includes multiple ways of working and remembering, then attaching them with sinuous borders that mimic natural membranes in flux, creates a narrative of evolving thought and consideration on the experience of the past few years of chaos.
Like Belkin, Shaw gathers imagery from nature in order to build her ‘hummollusks’ (human-mollusks). The surreal pairing of human appendages evolving from shells, ornamented sometimes with flocking and crystallization, present a questioning of human origin and our final form. It is an unnerving vision that not only exists for the relationship between humanity and nature but also the possibility of brutality in femininity as the body is cut from its individual identity and given a new residence. These structures can allude to mythology as well, asking the audience to involve their consciousness with manifestations of emotion towards corporeal symbolism found in religious allegories.
Dennie-Marcoux also utilizes mythological imagery in her work. In her hypnagogic animations there are recurring cherubs, some clad in heels dancing and some sad with butterflies on their back. This archetype of Christianity is conflated with these objects in a fantasy that seems less concerned about critical examination than with building a new existence using a disparate vocabulary of images. Like Nintendo, Minecraft, or Lord of the Rings, she is building a world of her own. It is mixed with old 3D archival models found online, and while there are recurrent characters, such as the cherub and the butterflies, their intentions are always new in each scene. It is a fantasy where ethereal elements are there to guide the viewer through the invocation of absurdity in lieu of a reality that is so limiting.
Probably the least severe of the analogies present in this exhibition are Austin’s tables. They embrace organic design, explicitly combining pieces together at their exposed joints to form a functional whole. The pastel side tables reference the body in their imperfections with porous surfaces, bumps and curves to create a mirror between user and object while maintaining sincerity in the design.
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Sophia Belkin (b. Moscow, Russia) earned her BFA in drawing and printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. She has participated in residency programs in Wisconsin,Vermont, Norway, Russia, and the Narva Art Residency in Estonia. Recent shows include Bog Copper Puddling at Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Ground Swell at Resort in Baltimore, and Svetspalonos- an immersive multimedia exhibition installed in collaboration with Dave Greber and Kanrec Sakul in Kosice, Slovakia. She currently lives and works in New Orleans, LA.
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sophiabelkin.com / @bophiaselkin
Lauren Carly Shaw (b. New York, NY) received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016 and a BFA in sculpture from the School of Visual Arts 2009. From 2009-2010 she participated in an international immersive contemporary studio program at Metafora in Barcelona, Spain. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with her first solo show occurring in the fall of 2013 at The Active Space in Brooklyn, NY. She was a 2014 Sunroom Project Space Artist at Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY and has participated in residency programs across the country, most recently at the Vermont Studio Center and Starry Night AIR program in NM. She currently lives and works in New York.
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laurencarlyshaw.com / @laurencarlyshaw
Katerine Dennie-Marcoux (b. Montreal, Canada) mixes her expertise in graphic design and digital art to create places and ambiances that are sometimes funny, sometimes dark but always going with the flow. She enjoys mastering new mediums such as sound, drawing, or anything that comes to her mind in the moment. She currently lives and works in Montreal, CAN.
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Chad Austin (b. Philadelphia, PA) is a carpenter who currently lives and works in Savannah, GA.
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Photos by Jacob Edenfield