Kim Schoenstadt 'Context v. Perspective'

Chimento Contemporary presents Kim Schoenstadt’s second solo exhibition at the
gallery opening March 24 and Kim Schoenstadt’s solo booth at Volta NY March 7-11,
2018.

Fresh off the final US iteration of Now Be Here in Washington, D.C., the project that
photographs female identifying artists en mass, Schoenstadt tackles the relationship
between situational context and individual perspective in a series of new mixed media
works. Continuing to explore human impulses and issues behind our built environment
through her signature language of symbolic architecture and spatially engaged
installation, Schoenstadt has devised a body of work addressing the tensions between
context (cultural and greater sociopolitical relations) and perspective (subjective
individual view). Her new works lean out from the wall to claim sculptural space with
delicate suspension.

This series combine, contrast, and conflate well-known buildings that reflect social
unrest, including the FBI headquarters in DC and buildings from the former Soviet
Union. When we talk about architecture it may not seem immediately necessary to
speak of politics. But with municipal buildings, the design is more than an expression of
the aesthetic zeitgeist, it is also a vehicle for promoting civic values and agendas that
Schoenstadt urges citizens to question.

The exhibition features a large wall drawing, Exercises in Perspective #2, featuring
municipal architecture from around the world. The work invades the gallery’s space
through the use of protruding perspective lines, serving as the visual and
lexicographical fulcrum for the whole series. Additionally two paper-based series are
enlarged passages lifted directly from within the context of the wall drawing, like detailed
map insets. These works explore that it is possible for humans to have many views of a
single event. In one series of works Schoenstadt recast shapes from the main drawing
by cutting parts out of wood and tethering them onto the page with blue line. Within
these works Schoenstadt nods to the Cubist WWII “Dazzle Camouflage” creating the
impression of gradually changing colors through the use of a single grey. This is a
physical manifestation of her central idea.

The other series of works in the exhibition details direct linear perspectives from the
main drawing and are suspended or woven with thin blue lines into a frame. On the wall
behind the transparent frame lays a background amorphous shape which provides a
literal context to see the work within.

Schoenstadt adroitly employs the perspectival space of architectural rendering in order
to address differences in human perspective. Vantage points and sight-lines in these
works are meant to lead us toward the problematic space of a subjective viewpoint…
as if the multiple perspectives in Rashomon and singular perspective in Rear
Window were mashed up in the work alongside her interlocking municipal structures.
Schoenstadt will continue this exploration as the featured artist in Chimento’s booth
for VOLTA NY 2018 March 7-11 Pier 90 booth C13. Like Kusama’s sticker
obliterations, Schoenstadt’s Exercise in Perspective #3 invites the audience in the
creative and executive process. Viewers will determine, pull, and anchor their
perspective lines, throughout the duration of the fair. The participatory nature of this
project forces the artist to accept others viewpoints and creates new possibilities in the
language of symbolic architectural imagery. Additional information for VOLTA NY
2018 HERE.

Kim Schoenstadt lives and works in Venice, California. Her work has been included in
national and international museum and gallery exhibitions. Her work is in the permanent
collections of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary
Art, Chicago, IL., The Van Abbemusuem, Eindhoven, Netherlands. She has also been
the recipient of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Washington DC, ARC Grant
from the Center for Cultural innovation, Los Angeles, CA, and the Catherine Doctorow
Prize for Contemporary Painting, The Jarvis and Catherine Doctorow Family
Foundation, Salt Lake City, UT