EXHIBITION "RISING TIDE" OPENS TO THE PUBLIC MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
OPENING RECEPTION: SUNDAY, JUNE 9, 2-5PM
HOURS: SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS, 11AM–5PM, through September 29th
Also open the Monday of Labor Day
LOCATION: BLDG. 19b, GOVERNORS ISLAND (NOLAN PARK AREA)
PRESS CONTACTS:
Ginger Andro p: (201) 803-4778 e: glicksmandro@optonline.net
Stephen Keltner p: (917) 854-5717 e: keltner.steve@gmail.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- The Sculptors Guild is pleased to announce its 6th-annual exhibition on Governors Island entitled "Rising Tide." Brooklyn-based art critic Sarah Schmerler (Art in America, Photograph, W+G News) curates, selecting site-specific projects and stand-alone sculptures by 13 Guild members. All are installed in a yellow clapboard Victorian mansion in the Nolan Park section on the north-eastern edge of the Island, which, during Hurricane Sandy, was the site of a 16-foot tidal surge. Little damage was sustained on the Island overall, but the same can not be said for many of the participating artists. "Eight months after Hurricane Sandy, artists across our region are still putting the pieces of their lives back together," writes the curator. "Might we not ask what other factors rock our creative community on a daily basis? Economic crises, the demands of family and job, the changing face of artworld politics…. This show is will focus on the new forms that artists come up with in their continual efforts to 'stay afloat.'"
Yasmin Gur (an Israeli artist who has worked in Ursula Von Rydingsvard's studio) fills a huge living room ceiling with a jagged, abstract construct of weathered wood salvaged from Sandy's devastation of Gerritsen Beach, as well as other locations. Upstairs, in a bedroom area, New Jersey-based Elaine Lorenz shows a floor-based ceramic work that plays with scale and surface: nesting abstracted wave forms with crisp edges, all covered with a gunmetal-grey patina that affects the drippings of an oil slick. Long Island City-artist Bernard Klevickas transforms the kitchen with upcycled materials that are both whimsical and loaded with portent: a 'melting' iceberg sculpture of white styrofoam food containers; and a tornado-like miasm of plastic-detergent-bottles and plush toys that erupts out of a pantry sink.
The domestic setting is nicely counterbalanced by the often-odd and utterly diverse materials here, as in Ginger Andro and Chuck Glicksman's unsettling video loop of rain falling on Long Beach Island, reflected over a fireplace mantlepiece (where a cozy painting or mirror might normally go), and the view of Manhattan's still-unfinished Freedom Tower, visible through the bedroom window from which a metal sculpture of fractured, geometric planes by Stephen Keltner looks out. "Such confluences couldn't be predicted," says the curator, who has scrawled the show's wall labels in pencil, directly on the house's peeling-plaster walls, "but I'm glad they happened. There must be a sense of tension in the air; and, frankly, tension is good for making art."
Participating artists include Andro & Glicksman, Meg Bloom, Colin Chase, Michelle Greene, Yasmin Gur, Lucy Hodgson, Stephen Keltner, Bernard Klevickas, Coral Penelope Lambert, Conrad Levenson, Elaine Lorenz, Sassona Norton, and Philip Simmons. Building 19 is located in Nolan Park, steps away from the landing of the Brooklyn ferry, and a six-minute walk away from the landing of the Manhattan ferry and is not wheelchair accessible. The content of this exhibition is family friendly and highly appropriate for children of all ages. Please consult docents on site as to which artworks may be touched.
Transportation to Governors Island is available free to the public, every hour, via ferry departing from Pier 6, Brooklyn, and the Governors Island Ferry Terminal, Manhattan, Saturdays and Sundays, 10AM–5:30PM. For more information, visit www.govisland.com.
The Sculptors Guild was founded in 1937 by sculptors Paul Manship, Chaim Gross, Jose de Creeft, Herbert Ferber, William Zorach, Jose De Rivera and Nathaniel Kaz and currently has over 80 members working in and around the New York Metropolitan Area. Membership within Sculptors Guild has always been based on the selection of sculptors with proven qualities of aesthetic excellence and professional standing. Its office is located in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn at 55 Washington Street, Suite 256, Brooklyn, NY 11201 and is open Tuesdays and Thursdays, year round. p: 718-422-0555 e: sculptorsguild@gmail.com.