Current Art Exhibit 8

FIREHOUSE PLAZA ART GALLERY

Current ExhibitElevate

Featuring: Carolyn Salas, Rachel Mica Weiss and Monika ZarzecznaSeptember 2 - November 13, 2014Artists’ Reception: Thursday, October 9 from 5-7 PM

Carolyn Salas 1

Gravity is opposed with tension as we strive to remain above ground and water, occasionally breaking free into the air. Humanity, the only self-referential species has always sought ways to record these efforts. The surfaces in this exhibit read as an archeological narrative, reflecting intention and experience. There is a link in each artist’s creative process, transcending materials into works of aesthetic impact and emotional resonance. Sculpture as a discipline is often associated with weight and mass, but these artists' works seem to levitate, carrying with them light, color, translucency, and space. Along with gravitational defiance each piece bears the hopes, fears, anxieties and aspirations of their creators, displayed in a diverse manipulation of materials. Taken into consideration with the surrounding NCC gallery and campus, the artwork invites the viewer to engage these ideas in real time and space as both the materials and ideas lift off and become something new.

Nathan Wasserbauer, Exhibit Curator

Carolyn SalasUntitled, 2012(speaking publicly at NCC's ArtForum lecture series on 9/16/14 11:30am-12:30pm G building room GC65)

Monika Zarzeczna 1

Monika ZarzecznaContaining Tenaciousness, 2014(speaking publicly at NCC's ArtForum lecture series on 9/30/14 11:30am-12:30pm G building room GC65)

Rachel WeissTwelve Planes (Locked and Crossed), 2014. (speaking publicly at NCC's ArtForum lecture series on 10/23/14 11:30am-12:30pm G building room GC65)

Carolyn Salas Circular

Carolyn SalasExploring paradoxical current affairs and our tendency to feel powerless to confront the crises of our existing surroundings, Carolyn Salas uses a wide array of materials including found objects, photography, moldmaking, collage and recycled items to create sculptural platforms where material and concept meet to transform space and the way we view it. The work speaks to interactions between human civilizations, hierarchical powers of societal success, relationships, and nature with an emotional resonance that takes the works beyond any one of these single issues and into a universal realm. In a culture obsessed with mass production and disposability her work is a conduit of her opposition to this standard. With laborious craft and a handmade touch, the imperfections and human attributes of burdens, failures and achievements of our everyday are exposed. Salas looks at the work as a self-exploration of the subconscious, where she tries to physically create a state of mind. Responding to Carl Jung’s idea of artists and alchemists projecting part of their psyche into matter or inanimate objects, possessing in a sense a secret soul, the objects eventually live out a life of their own.Untitled, 2012

Rachel Mica WeissRachel Mica Weiss combines textile languages with density of stone, cast forms, and wood constructions to create sculptures and installations embedded with gravity. Her practice is rooted in the craft of weaving- its technical processes, its historical use, and its relationship to architecture. Her sculptures and installations are microcosms of tension in which stable structures unravel and barriers- real, self-imposed, and imaginary- are set askew. Using an environment’s unique architectural elements as her framework, Weiss creates lurching architectural interventions: bold blockades that confront the viewer and engender feelings of vulnerability. Hand-strung on site, these labor-intensive installations are a reference to the repetitious act of warping- the measuring, threading, and tensioning of thousands of threads into the loom.Six-Planed Scaffolding, 2014

Monika ZarzecznaMonika Zarzeczna is fascinated by the reverence and value we assign to mundane objects: how we perceive value or create a feeling of meaning by collecting, tying together, or arranging them in certain ways. Her work reflects impressions of her daily encounters with discarded and devalued objects and makeshift structures in her Brooklyn neighborhood. She often works in series and ‘Containing Tenaciousness’ is a follow up to the 2011/12 ‘Hardnekkig’ installation. Made almost entirely of discarded materials and inspired by electricity towers, staircases and sidewalk gardens ‘Containing Tenaciousness’ combines suspended descending and rising elements that add up to a fragile, ramshackle structure, a 3D drawing that is looking for balance, weight and weightlessness.Containing Tenaciousness, 2014

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Previous Exhibit

FIREHOUSE PLAZA ART GALLERY

Current ExhibitElevate

Featuring: Carolyn Salas, Rachel Mica Weiss and Monika ZarzecznaSeptember 2 - November 13, 2014Artists’ Reception: Thursday, October 9 from 5-7 PM