Elisa D'Arrigo - In the Moment | Martha Clippinger - Pieces

press release

elisa d’arrigo
in the moment
march 30-may 11, 2019
opening reception: sat, march 30, 3-6pm catalog available
The Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to announce in the moment, a show of recent ceramics by Elisa D’Arrigo. In this exhibition, her 10th with the gallery, D’Arrigo continues to consider the possibilities for integrating painting, drawing, improvisational process and animated sculptural form within the context of the ceramic vessel.
The works begin as variously sized hollow and hand-built cylindrical forms that the artist then manipulates and combines while wet, in a period of intense activity. The “postures” that result allude to the body in a gestural and even visceral manner. They exude a figural presence, and their hollowness evokes the notion of interiority, and animation from within. The artist has stated that she is compelled by the way we inhabit and imagine our bodies from the inside out, and by the psychological and corporeal aspects of containment. The inside creates the outside, and visa versa.
D’Arrigo’s penchant for in the moment decisions yields forms that seem surprising, yet oddly familiar. The works convey the intrinsic humor of unexpected asymmetries merged with densely glazed “surfaces that run with an impossible wealth of color, pattern and texture...Variously nubby and scaly, striated and pocked, the resulting surfaces evoke polished gemstones, luster glass, patterned knits and flesh both tender pink and charred, mineral black.” (Excerpted from accompanying catalog essay by Nancy Princenthal).
Princenthal describes the works as a “series of alarmingly potent little ceramic figures that engage our propensities for reverie, humor and, perhaps most satisfying, deep human recognition.”
D’Arrigo’s work is included in the collections of The Mead Art Museum, The High Museum of Art, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Mint Museum of Art and Design, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, and Dieu Donne Papermill. Reviews of her work have appeared in several publications including Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, Sculpture, Partisan Review, ArtPapers, and The New York Observer.
The Gallery is located at 529 W 20th Street, 6th floor and is open Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 6 pm.
For further information contact Miles Manning at 212-463-9666. Photo credit: Adam Reich
elizabeth harris gallery 529 w20 st ny 10011 212 463 9666
www.ehgallery.com [email protected]

press release

martha clippinger
pieces
march 30-may 11
reception: saturday, march 30, 3-6pm
Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to present pieces, the gallery’s fourth solo exhibition of works by artist Martha Clippinger.
In pieces, Clippinger continues creating her painted wooden constructions and woolen tapestries while introducing quilts and ceramics to the mix. Improvisation guides all of the work in which repeated elements flip, turn, and shuffle in their rhythmic compositions.
The intersection of fine art and craft has long been of interest to Clippinger, and the textile traditions of weavings and quilts have provided fertile ground for the artist to continue her exploration of color relationships within geometric abstraction. In pieces, Clippinger presents recent quilts with a woolen tapestry from her ongoing collaboration with Zapotec weaver, Licha Gonzalez Ruíz.
Also on view are painted wooden constructions and recent ceramic reliefs created during the summer of 2018, when the artist was in residence at the Kohler Co. Arts and Industry program. Utilizing the slip-casting process, she repeatedly cast the same form (a hand-carved wooden tray from Oaxaca), but manipulated each casting, cutting and collaging the clay to produce a series of unique ceramic reliefs.
Reviewing her last exhibition at the gallery, critic John Yau wrote, “
In this exhibition, Clippinger displays her continued curiosity in new modes of making, and in the process, blurs the boundaries and flattens the hierarchies that exist between fine art and craft.
Martha Clippinger’s work is in public collections, including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Duke University, and The Columbus Museum. She is the recipient of a 2017 Durham Arts Council Grant, 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award and a 2013 Fulbright-Garcia Robles research grant completed in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has been a fellow at the Sam and Adele Golden Art Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, and her art has been featured in Architectural Digest, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and The Huffington Post.
Elizabeth Harris Gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, 6th floor and is open Tuesday-
elizabeth harris gallery 529 w20 st ny 10011 212 463 9666

consistency one sees in her work, there are enough shifts, ruptures, and unexpectedly diverse materials to suggest that she is still moving, still experimenting. This, of course, is the hardest thing to do – to stay open to fresh possibilities, rather than trying to develop a
Certainly, for all the
brand.”
Saturday 11-6.
for further information contact miles manning at 212-463-9666.