ANDREA STANISLAV 'Preternatural Shadow Shifter'

Ca’ d’Oro Gallery is thrilled to present Preternatural Shadow Shifter, the solo show of American, post-media artist Andréa Stanislav. The exhibition marks the New York premiere of her exciting new series: “Refractive Collages”.

Preternatural Shadow Shifter is a multimedia and multidimensional exhibition that presents a selection of 2D and 3D works in dynamic conversation with each other, the space and the audience. The refractive. kaleidoscopic collages have a constructed and layered nature: an essentially sculptural quality that allows them to enter the gallery space with a 3-dimensional presence. Crucial to the discourse of the exhibition – and to Stanislav’s artistic practice as a whole - is the poignant, multi-sensorial experience. Incorporating taxidermic animals, collaged refractive film, pop cultural iconography, and even images of her own work, Stanislav creates intricate microcosms of universal information overload. Each one of these pieces challenges the viewer with complex visual and conceptual scenarios to explore, aiming to establish an interaction between artworks and audience by evoking both personal and collective memories.

On the same experiential note and in direct conversation with the refractive works, the sculptures in Preternatural Shadow Shifter reveal another element of the artist’s language — the animal interlocutor. The natural world puncturing the solid, modern form. Often overwhelming, and sometimes enigmatic, Stanislav’s layers and her optical distortions are strategic, confrontational. These complex composites become sculpturally symbolic of a perplexing cultural state. The artist forces our engagement on the rawest level—an interruption of our habitual modes of existence: animals and human artifacts offer a representation of the disharmony and the perturbing separation between man and nature.

Stanislav expands our perception of our own nature by assembling remote, often contradictory elements; her investigation of beauty is an inquest, a dialectic between unbearable opposites. The dichotomy between the transience of popular culture and the temporality of animal existence creates an unremitting tension. In true Surrealist fashion, the artist draws on the unconscious visual and conceptual associations of the viewer. Oftentimes darkly humorous Preternatural Shadow Shifter is ultimately a critique of symbolic structures, the origin myths of civilization and the pastimes and playthings of power.

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About the Artist
Andréa Stanislav is an American post media artist, whose hybrid practice includes sculpture, video installation and public projects. Stanislav received a MFA from Alfred University, New York and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work considers themes of harmony and deconstruction in the natural world and popular culture. In addition, it explores the architecture of empire by questioning the systems built on human capital, their hegemonic structure strongly influenced by the rise and fall of bygone kingdoms. Formally, Stanislav exploits the motifs of authority. Using symbolic structures, such as obelisks, columns, or large, rough-hewn boulders, she invokes monumentality. But, in her manipulation of these traditional monoliths, the artist disrupts their signal aiming to upend the myths they embody, to question the reverence that the forms inspire. Sometimes she achieves this compositionally, by arranging the objects irreverently or confrontationally: “I’m interested in making art that is experiential in a very physical way. I’m working with that play of light, with the viewer’s experience in mind,” Stanislav said. “I want to give the viewer almost too much to look at, and maybe create a sense of confusion, which is my experience with modern technology and being bombarded by too much information.” Stanislav’s sculptures juxtapose shiny mirrors and crystals with taxidermy of coyotes, rabbits and birds. The animal spirit world is mounted and stuffed, and presented in a way that reminds one just how far removed the modern world is from nature. Stanislav transforms the usually stoic and austere into something conspicuously glossy, even ostentatious. Mirrored surfaces are of particular interest. They reflect, they implicate, they bring the viewer into the work. The artist combines many of art history’s ‘isms’ within her work: Minimalism, Modernism, Dadaism and Surrealism. Her work even goes back to the Baroque and to painters like Bruegel and Bosh, who have engaged the viewer by really activating the eye on the plane with lots of activity.
Selected solo exhibitions and projects include:
Saint Louis Art Museum, The Museum of Non-Conformist Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, 21c Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Art Centre Pushkinskaya-10,St. Pertersburg, Russia; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Redux Contemporary Art Center, Charleston, SC; The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, UK; Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL; Jonathan Shorr Gallery, New York, NY; Burnet Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; The Grunwald Gallery of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN; The Pelham Art Center, Pelham, NY; Scope New York 2013. Her work has also has been exhibited around the world at venues such as: The 2013 Moscow Biennial, Moscow, Russia; The Manifesta 10 Biennial Parallel Program, St. Petersburg Russia; The U.S Ambassador’s Residence, Stockholm, Sweden; Fieldgate Gallery, London, UK; Al Sabah Gallery, Kuwait City, Kuwait; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND; House of the Nobleman, New York, NY; Carriage Trade, New York, NY; Dumbo Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY; Land of Tomorrow, Louisville, KY. Stnislav’s work has also been exhibited in numerous art fairs including: Art Chicago, Art Miami, Art Hampton, Art Southampton, Art Palm Beach, Art Wynwood, Chicago Next, Houston Fine Art Fair, Pulse Miami, San Francisco Fine Art Fair, Scope New York and Scope Miami.
Awards:
Ms. Stanislav has recently been awarded with the 2015 Freund Fellowship at the Washington University in St. Louis (MO); a 2014 Art-centre Pushkinskaya-10 St. Pertersburg International Residency Award; the 2013 Imagine Fund Award, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; a 2012 Swing Space Artist Residency, New York, NY; a 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Grant; a 2010-2011 McKnight Artists Fellowship for Visual Arts; a Socrates Sculpture Park 2009 Emerging Artist Fellowship; the 2010 University of Calgary International Visiting Artist Award; the 2011 Can Serrat International Full Fellowship, and a 2005 FSP/Jerome Fellowship Award, among many other awards.
Selected public and private art commissions and project locations include:
Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; University of Oregon, Eugene, OR; Cocina Del Barrio, Edina, MN; Royal Cruise Lines, Miami, FL; Morningside College, Sioux City, IA; Mon Serrat, Spain; Key West, FL; Louisville, KY, and Washington DC. Andréa Stanislav’s work is represented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, UK; K35 Gallery, Moscow, Russia; Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL; and Jonathan Shorr New York, NY. She is
an Associate Professor of Visual Arts in Sculpture at the University of Minnesota - Minneapolis.