CYDONIA
ZⓢONAMACO 2017

FORT WORTH / MEXICO CITY -CYDONIA will feature a curated exhibition with two female artists, hailing from Polandand Canada. In Another Chance to Do Right: Emerging Aesthetics Featuring Repetition, Pattern and Rhythm, Alicja Bielawskaand Caroline Mousseau demonstrate new ways in which serial forms and process have evolved beyond Minimalism’s expansion of the ‘unique original’ work. The booth will be avisually exciting and diverse constellation of drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Freud declared the act of repetition a human compulsion. Why do we repeat the past? More interestingly, why do we repeat mistakes? Organized specifically for Zona Maco, Another Chance to Do Right tests Freud’s famous declaration. Such acts are driven by our “desire to return to an earlier state of things.”

Warsaw-based Alicja Bielawska states she not believe in mistakes; mistakes delineate her practice from that of industrial design and mass production techniques which influenced art of the 1960’s. Her drawings, collages, and sculptures insist on a collective memory. The past is not a constraint. The past can function as common ground to connect with the viewer. If we can find common ground, we can negotiate shared possibilities. Our origins can be the same so we can share new ideas.

Intuitive drawings made with colored pencils provide a mental architecture and share a basis for her sculptures: colorful, ribbon-wrapped shaped metal rod forms or metal constructions formed for customized textiles made to define its space. Bielawska’s works bridge-build the conceptual gap from the second to the third dimension. For her, sculpture begins with height and width. Depth is a natural extension, uniquely tied to drawing.

As a single act is repeated, it creates a pattern. Patterns enable one to experience a sensory vibration, a type of rhythm, becoming ingrained within an individual, subjective universe. Canadian painter Caroline Mousseau’s disciplined practice produces an aesthetic functioning as an impasse between painting genres. Some works appear as abstraction; others look post-minimalist, and some appear to be modernist in inspiration, with obvious geometric design. Mousseau’s different methodologies create beautiful, lyrical, textured, optical surfaces; her dried, paste-y, oil paints physically and visually yearn for her viewer.

When we return to the beginning, the sense of possibility is most intense. In the exhibition, mistakes are reframed. Simple gestures, repeated, accumulated value. We can understand mistakes as another opportunity to pioneer the future in a manner that these different artists do: mistakes are another chance to do right. The show feels fun, filled with color, and packed with visual stimulation and thoughtful investigation.

CYDONIA is proud to present programming supporting emerging female artists in context outstripping our previous generations’ gender concerns. The concept and aesthetics begin and end with the work.

Alicja Bielawska graduated with an art history diploma from the University of Warsaw and the Gerrit Reitveld Academie in Amsterdam. She also studied at Central Saint Martins in London, UK. The artist is the recipient of numerous grants and scholarships including the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, Mondriaan Fonds of The Netherlands, and Young Poland. In 2013, the Modern Art Museum of Warsaw commissioned a large-scale work from Bielawska, that is now part of its permanent collection. In 2015, she was a finalist for the esteemed Views by Deutsche Bank award. In 2016, she was also a finalist for the prestigious Polityka magazine award. This year, shehas two solo exhibitions, Labirynth Gallery in Lublin and Kasia Michalska in Warsaw.

Caroline Mousseau graduated as the valedictorian of Emily Carr University of Art +Design in 2012. She studied at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 2010. Mousseau has exhibited throughout Canada, and in 2014, she was curated in the exhibition 100 Painters of Tomorrow, with an eponymousbook launch, in London and New York. The artist was met with strong Canadian support for her solo presentation at Art Toronto 2016. In 2017, Mousseau will participate in her first museum exhibition, abNEXT: Contemporary Abstraction by Emerging Artists,at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, and she returns to Texas to mount her second solo exhibition with CYDONIA.

CYDONIA is a contemporary art gallery. Our programming is committed to co-operating with artists whose practices reflect conceptual research. We approach art as a cultural good related to reciprocity, praxis, and discourse.

For more information, please contact info@cydoniagallery.com, call + 1 214-296-4848, or visit www.cydoniagallery.com.