D’Amelio Terras, New York
July 1 – August 20, 2009
Curated by Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker
Featuring the work of Justin Beal, Mario Correa, Kate Costello, Katie Grinnan, Aiko Hachisuka, Vishal Jugdeo, Lauren Lavitt, Allison Miller and Rebecca Morris with selected works by Alice Hutchins
Originally this show was supposed to be about a moving truck going cross-country packed with art from Los Angeles. We’d invite a bunch of artists to contribute something and drive a truck around collecting pieces. When it was full, we’d drive eastward, show up in New York and put something together. This is basically what happened, minus the U-haul. “Tables and Chairs” brings together nine LA-based artists paired with selected works by Alice Hutchins. This show grew from associations in artworks that share an interest in abstraction, geometry, interaction, and dissolution.
Studios were visited and pieces were accumulated, withdrawn and incorporated back in again. Some works had been in our minds for a long time, a few offered from their resting places in studio corners. Perhaps this specific collection came about because of the camaraderie that is present when artists act as curators. As fellow artists, we enter into the studio with an understanding that it is also a place the artist lives. The works are (and are not) what they appear to be; straightforward yet slippery, a bit off kilter. Material directness and a sense of experimentation leads us paradoxically into interior spaces. Each feels to be on the edge of falling apart, covering itself up, or disappearing altogether. These pieces are not quiet. They hide loudly and aggressively, like rainbow camouflage. “Tables and Chairs,” the exhibition, feels awkward and private — a little too close to home.
In the front room is a selection of sculptures by Alice Hutchins. Spanning 40 years, Hutchins’ magnetic works foster a certain intimacy and interaction. They can be rearranged into infinite variations and Hutchins, who lives among her works, is constantly shifting them. As written by Merrily Peebles, “An American based in Paris between 1950 and 1980, Hutchins began her artistic career as a painter at the age of 40. Critical to her artistic development was her inclusion in a group of avant-garde artists, musicians, and poets in Paris in the 1960s and her involvement in the Fluxus movement in New York City. In 1967, Hutchins began experimenting with three-dimensional magnetic works and has since devoted her full attention to transformable, interactive work-a collaboration among the magnetic field, the art viewer and herself.” (Magnetic Encounters, 2005)
–Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker
