July 15 - September 29, 2012
Traywick Contemporary is pleased to announce Wall Works 4, a group exhibition featuring site-specific installations by four artists: Steve Briscoe, Benicia Gantner, Diana Guerrero-Maciá and Nancy Mintz. As in our previous shows from the series, each of the artists in Wall Works 4 address the constraints and possibilities of our exhibition space while investigating the ways in which physical context can inform the work itself.
Steve Briscoe's sculptures reflect spontaneity of form as he responds to the peculiarities of the wide ranging materials he employs. Often driven by a vague notion of a problem to solve, or intrigued by the visual qualities of an object, he allows the materials themselves to be a catalyst in his reflections on the urban environment. Briscoe's installation -- an accumulation of wall-based sculptures -- relates to his practice in which one idea, object, material or process leads to the next.
Benicia Gantner creates distinctive hybrid imagery based on mysterious unions of the natural and man-made worlds that springs forth in unpredictable and engaging ways. Known for her unique vinyl collages on paper and acrylic panel, Gantner has created several site-specific, wall-based installations for this exhibition that respond to the architectural details of our space and allow the work to exist simultaneously in several dimensional planes.
Diana Guerrero-Maciá's work presents a new relationship between traditions of modernism, collage, craft, sampling, popular culture, and painting. Materials such as wool, vinyl, cotton, felt and leather are sewn together by hand to create carefully composed surfaces that humorously question their own identity. For this exhibition Guerrero-Maciá created a pair of large-scale works that are structural inverses, their mirrored schemas of black and white speaking to one another from opposing walls.
In her sculptures and installations, Nancy Mintz explores the intersection of personal identity and the natural world. For Wall Works 4, the artist assertively takes control of her surroundings. Using materials such as felt, steel and wood, she creates a landscape complete with mountains and moon, that is also strangely human. Mintz's installation addresses the ways in which natural forces shape our lives and the environment around us.