CURIOSITY: Visual Art Source Review

I'm very excited to share with you critic DeWitt Cheng's thoughtful review in Visual Art Source in response to my exhibition Curiosity at Eleanor Harwood Gallery.

Metamorphic: Collage in the Dada/Surrealist Tradition

Metamorphic: Collage in the Dada/Surrealist Tradition
curated by DeWitt Cheng

July 16 - September 16, 2016
Reception: August 4, from 4:30 to 7:00pm

STANFORD ART SPACES

Artists: Jenny Honnert Abell, John Hundt, Catie O’Leary, Sherry Parker, Francesca Pastine and Vanessa Woods

Please see our Facebook page for directions and parking locations.

 

Time and Money #11 (detail), Time and Money Series, 2016, wood, plexiglass, New York Times pages, Mylar, 22" x 11" x  2.5"

REVIEW IN ART Ltd.

My work is reviewed by DeWitt Cheng in Art Ltd.

Artforum, the art magazine published in New York City (after a childhood in San Francisco and adolescence in Los Angeles), is accorded ecclesiastical status by many art worlders, despite its history in the 1960s and '70s as the de-facto Ministry of Formalism, a purist doctrine now fallen into disrepute: an undoctrine, almost, in Orwell-speak. Francesca Pastine's sculptural interventions with copies of the magazine for the past four years, then, have a certain sly humor. Notes Pastine: "They were familiar fixtures in my friends' homes, nobody wanted to throw them away. I was intrigued by their square format, particularly when the bloated art market was reflected in their one-inch thickness... Starting with the covers, I cut, bend, manipulate, pull, and dig my way through them, revealing a visceral topography of art trends... My X-acto blade mimics a pencil, subtracting rather than adding... Through physically intervening with these familiar icons of the art establishment, I suffuse the inanimate with emotional power, creating a palpable complexity of form and information." Pastine's intricately cut assemblages resemble, variously, quilts, lava flows, tree fungi, clouds, and kids' pop-up books; some of them, labeled "unsolicited collaborations," name names--of famous, envied cover artists. From May 26 to July 7 at Eleanor Harwood Gallery.