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Rochester Contemporary is located at
137 East Avenue, Rochester, N.Y. 14604
Gallery Hours: Office Hours:
Wed - Sun 1-5 Mon - Fri: 9-5
Rochester Contemporary
137 East Ave.
Rochester, NY 14604
585.461.2222
lizz@rochestercontemporary.org
March 28, 2007
Rochester, NY—— Absence/Excess/Loss, guest curated by Marni Shindelman & Sarah E. Webb opens at the Rochester Contemporary (RoCo) on April 20th with an opening reception from 7 – 10pm. A panel discussion with the artists and curators is scheduled for April 21st at 11am.
Absence/Excess/Loss is a group exhibition of installation-based work, which considers how the process of repetition informs memory and melancholia. Specifically, how does the creation of repeated objects relate to the act of mourning? This exhibition will consider the work of seven artists - each sharing an affinity for vernacular and domestic materials in which process comes to bear as much meaning as the (final) object. Each artist will create an installation unique to the gallery space at Rochester Contemporary, considering how the act of repetition, and the making of multiples, generates memory and meaning.
Penelope Stewart, Toronto, Canada, casts doorknobs in beeswax as both a reference to and marker of the threshold of physical space and spatial memory. Daniela Rumpf, Minneapolis, MN, elegantly fills a linen closet with dish towels, hand knit and then dipped in porcelain, as she questions how material necessity is different from the perceived material needs of American consumer culture. Tara Parsons’, New York, NY, handmade latex airplane-shaped balloons are an elegiac tribute to a friend lost during the World Trade Center attack. Maire Kennedy, Chicago, IL, loops 15,000 pull ties into cornucopia forms as she blurs the boundaries between botanical and corporeal anatomies. Sarah Hutt, Boston, MA, etches a 1,000 line poem on the underside of 1,000 wooden bowls, as means to recover memories of a mother who died when the artist was thirteen.
Wendy Kawabata, Honolulu, HI, wraps kukui nuts in red thread, in an attempt to regain connection to a lost attachment of home, land, and family. Andrea Cote, Brooklyn, NY, seeks a place where the simulated, the metaphorical, and the corporeal body converge. By printing directly on the gallery wall with cuttings from her own hair, Cote exposes the anonymous presence of the artists model.
Special thanks for support of this exhibition belongs to: The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Humanities Project at the University of Rochester, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Rochester, Department of Art & Art History at University of Rochester, the College Writing Program at University of Rochester, Department of Art at Hobart & William Smith College, and the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at RIT, Greece Dermatological Associates, Boylan, Brown, Code, Vigdor & Wilson, LLP, Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust, George Abraham M.D., and Harter Secrest & Emery LLP.
Absence/Excess/Loss will be on display until May 20, 2007. Gallery hours are Wednesday – Sunday 1 – 5pm.
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| Andrea Cote |
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| Sarah Hutt |
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| Wendy Kawabata |
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| Maire Kennedy |
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| Tara Parsons |
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| Daniela Rumpf |
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| Penelope Stewart |
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