Piece Unique: Liz Craft
03 Jul - 01 Aug 2009
PIECE UNIQUE: LIZ CRAFT
“Baby Carriage”
3 July – 1 August 2009
Private View: Thursday 2 July, 6-8 Pm
Piece Unique refers to one work by an artist being shown in a small cube like space on the second floor of the gallery. The concept relates to the space founded in Paris in 1988 by the legendary Naples art dealer Lucio Amelio and his business partner Marussa Gravagnuolo who still runs the space today. The original concept was to exhibit one new art work at a time realised especially for the space. Alison Jacques Gallery have developed this concept to encompass not just new site specific work but also the idea of historic work shown in isolation so the viewer can experience and focus on the significance of one work at a time.
“With paint and patina, cast bronze can be made to look eerily like an array of things – from wicker canning to flower buds – with almost indexical texture: this is nothing but the starting point of mimesis as a mode of abstraction, which Craft finesses almost to the extreme of nonrepresentation. She removes the “safeties, risking the presentation of stuff specific, familiar, and yet uncannily off...”
Bruce Hainley, catalogue essay for Liz Craft monograph, Halle für Kunst, published by JPR|Ringier, 2006
Following on from a solo show of new work in 2006. Alison Jacques Gallery announces a project room presentation with Californian based artist Liz Craft. The show will consist of one new sculpture Baby Carriage, a large bronze and porcelain sculpture based on a miniature object the artist found in a thrift store. It has a strangeness arising from the inflated scale and shift in material from the original wicker trinket – conflating commonplace subject matter with aspects of the monumental grandeur of bronze. The surreal presence of the work is typical of Craftʼs sculptures in which she imbues quotidian objects with qualities from dreams, or memory. The sculpture exists between associations: a nest; a carriage; an Easter egg; an embryo of human proportions.
Liz Craft (born LA, 1970) lives and works in LA. She received her MFA from the University of California in 1997. Her work is currently exhibited in WONDERLAND - Through the Looking Glass, KADE Museum, The Netherlands and later this year she will be included in Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection, at the Hammer Museum, LA. Other group shows include: Comme des bêtes (Like Animals), Musee des Beaux- Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2008); Eden’s Edge, Hammer Museum, LA (2007); LA Now, Las Vegas Museum of Art (2008); Cult Fiction, Hayward Gallery, London, touring to The New Art Gallery, Walsall and Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds (2007); the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004). Solo exhibitions include Halle für Kunst e.V. Luenëburg, Germany, catalogue published (2006); and Centrum fur Gegenwartskunst Oberosterreich, Linz, Austria (2001).
Runs Parallel To Bernd Ribbeck In the Main Gallery Space: 3 July – 1 August 2009
“Baby Carriage”
3 July – 1 August 2009
Private View: Thursday 2 July, 6-8 Pm
Piece Unique refers to one work by an artist being shown in a small cube like space on the second floor of the gallery. The concept relates to the space founded in Paris in 1988 by the legendary Naples art dealer Lucio Amelio and his business partner Marussa Gravagnuolo who still runs the space today. The original concept was to exhibit one new art work at a time realised especially for the space. Alison Jacques Gallery have developed this concept to encompass not just new site specific work but also the idea of historic work shown in isolation so the viewer can experience and focus on the significance of one work at a time.
“With paint and patina, cast bronze can be made to look eerily like an array of things – from wicker canning to flower buds – with almost indexical texture: this is nothing but the starting point of mimesis as a mode of abstraction, which Craft finesses almost to the extreme of nonrepresentation. She removes the “safeties, risking the presentation of stuff specific, familiar, and yet uncannily off...”
Bruce Hainley, catalogue essay for Liz Craft monograph, Halle für Kunst, published by JPR|Ringier, 2006
Following on from a solo show of new work in 2006. Alison Jacques Gallery announces a project room presentation with Californian based artist Liz Craft. The show will consist of one new sculpture Baby Carriage, a large bronze and porcelain sculpture based on a miniature object the artist found in a thrift store. It has a strangeness arising from the inflated scale and shift in material from the original wicker trinket – conflating commonplace subject matter with aspects of the monumental grandeur of bronze. The surreal presence of the work is typical of Craftʼs sculptures in which she imbues quotidian objects with qualities from dreams, or memory. The sculpture exists between associations: a nest; a carriage; an Easter egg; an embryo of human proportions.
Liz Craft (born LA, 1970) lives and works in LA. She received her MFA from the University of California in 1997. Her work is currently exhibited in WONDERLAND - Through the Looking Glass, KADE Museum, The Netherlands and later this year she will be included in Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection, at the Hammer Museum, LA. Other group shows include: Comme des bêtes (Like Animals), Musee des Beaux- Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2008); Eden’s Edge, Hammer Museum, LA (2007); LA Now, Las Vegas Museum of Art (2008); Cult Fiction, Hayward Gallery, London, touring to The New Art Gallery, Walsall and Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds (2007); the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004). Solo exhibitions include Halle für Kunst e.V. Luenëburg, Germany, catalogue published (2006); and Centrum fur Gegenwartskunst Oberosterreich, Linz, Austria (2001).
Runs Parallel To Bernd Ribbeck In the Main Gallery Space: 3 July – 1 August 2009