SURFACING
Curated by Alex Paik and Mark Joshua Epstein
March 7 - April 11, 2020
MONO PRACTICE is pleased to present Surfacing, a group exhibition curated by artists Alex Paik and Mark Joshua Epstein, featuring the work of Sarah Bednarek, Ricki Dwyer, Glendalys Medina, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Cory Siegler, and Patricia Zarate.
Surfacing brings together six artists whose work employs pattern in various iterations. Repeated forms behave and misbehave-- looping in and out of systems and structures we might have previously understood as fixed. The visual patterns that emerge in Surfacing are drawn from a variety of external and internal sources -- aesthetic histories, cultural references, personal experience, and even studio daydreams. These patterns are places, times, people, communities. They are memory; personal and collective recollections made visual through shape. The artists here, in different ways, argue against distinctions between ornamentation and content. Rather than having pattern act as a decorative device, artists in Surfacing instead use pattern as a way to bring forth the complex visual, cultural, and personal histories that underpin their work.
Sarah Bednarek was visionary sculptor who passed away from cancer on December 24, 2019. She was 39. When she was first diagnosed, in 2009, near death following emergency surgery, she felt herself hurtling toward a light in a tunnel of kaleidoscopic, every changing geometric forms. After she recovered, her work changed momentously. She was inspired to bring these visions in to the world of the corporeal, inspired by the profundity of shape and color alone. Working with wood, power tools, and an indefatigable spirit, her work would explore formal relationships such as symmetry, repetition, texture and color through rigorous geometry and craftsmanship. She was a 2005 MFA graduate of the Sculpture program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her exhibition record included solo shows (most recently at TSA New York), curated shows, and group shows, both nationally and internationally. She received several awards and scholarships in support of her art.
Ricki Dwyer received their undergraduate degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an Art Practice MFA from UC Berkeley. As an artist they have exhibited with Anglim Gilbert, Eleanor Harwood, Embark Gallery, Root Division and the Berkeley Arts Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in the Bay Area. The have been artist in resident with Recology San Francisco, Jupiter Woods Gallery London, The Textile Arts Center New York, and The White Page Gallery Minneapolis. They have been recipient of the Eisner Prize, Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, and the Queer Cultural Center’s Emerging Scholar Award. Ricki is currently teaching in the Textiles department of California College of the Arts, and holding a studio fellowship with University of California Berkeley.
Glendalys Medina is an Afro-Carribean interdisciplinary artist who received her MFA from Hunter College. Medina’s work has presented work at such notable venues as The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Kitchen, The New Museum, PAMM, Artists Space, Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo Spain, the Bronx Museum of Art and El Museo del Barrio. Medina is a Jerome Foundation Fellow and will be a Resident at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in 2019, was a SIP fellow at EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in 2016, a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES artist resident at El Museo Del Barrio in 2015, a resident at Yaddo in 2018 and 2015, a Rome Prize fellow in Visual Arts in 2013, a NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Art in 2012, and a participant in the Bronx Museum Artist in the Marketplace residency in 2010.
Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born interdisciplinary artist and educator. Mutiti holds a diploma in multimedia art from the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in graphic design. She has been a resident artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Recess, and the Centre for Book Arts, both in New York City. In 2015, Mutiti was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in its inaugural year. Mutiti has participated in several group shows including “Salon Style” at the Studio Museum, a special screening for “Dreamlands” at the Whitney Museum, “Talking Pictures” at the Metropolitan Museum, and “THREE: On Visibility and Camouflage” at We Buy Gold. Mutiti produces project-based works, founding Black Chalk and Co with Tinashe Mushakavanhu, a collective of writers, artists, curators, and educators that initiate research-based projects that result in publications, archival projects, and events. As cofounder of Black Chalk & Co. Mutiti has produced projects cultural projects and events. She is also artistic director for Reading Zimbabwe, a platform for archiving and publishing. Mutiti is currently Assistant Professor in Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Utilizing a variety of media, including patchwork quilting, drawing and bookmaking, Cory Emma Siegler’s practice explores the tactility, functionality, and inherent potential of art objects. Cory earned a BFA in Printmaking from Pratt Institute in 2008. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, 80WSE at NYU Gallery, Bard Graduate Center Gallery, and Printed Matter, Inc., among others. She has been an exhibitor at the NY Art Book Fair (PS 1 MoMA), the Odds and Ends Art Book Fair (Yale Art Gallery), and the Brooklyn Art Book Fair. Her artists' books are held in the permanent collections of the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Library, among others. Cory has been an artist in residence at the Textile Arts Center and at Eileen Fisher. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Patricia Zarate is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, including museum exhibitions at Queens Museum of Art (Flushing, NY); El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY); Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan, PR); and Gwangju Art Museum (Gwangju, South Korea). She was awarded a fellowship at Bau Institute artist residency, Otranto, Italy in 2013 and she was the recipient of an individual artist support grant from the Queens Council on the Arts in 2004. Her work has been reviewed in Artnexus, Art News, Newsday, and the Philadelphia Weekly. In 2013, Patricia co-founded Key Projects an art space, devoted to creating dialogue and community with other artists through group exhibitions. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Baruch College, City University of New York. Born in Cali, Colombia, she currently lives and works in New York City.
About the curators:
Mark Joshua Epstein received his MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art in London and his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University. Epstein's work has had solo exhibitions at Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY), Caustic Coastal (Manchester, UK), Vane Gallery (Newcastle, UK), Biquini Wax (Mexico City, Mexico) and Brian Morris Gallery (New York). Group shows include: Good Children Gallery (New Orleans, LA), Monaco Gallery (St Louis, MO), Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University (New York, NY), Beverly's (New York, NY), and Hoffman Lachance (St Louis, MO). Epstein has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony, Macdowell Colony, Saltonstall Foundation, and the NARS Foundation, amongst others.
Alex Paik is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work explores perception, interdependence, and improvisation within structure through site-responsive geometric modular wall installations. His work has been shown at galleries and art fairs nationally and internationally. He is the founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and Gallery Director at Trestle Gallery, a non- profit arts organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. From 2015-18, he was Curator of Satellite Art Show, an alternative art fair in Miami.