New Work – Two Artists

Anita Glesta - Andra Samelson

on view: March 29 – May 3, 2009
Opening reception: Sunday, March 29, 4–6pm

With her new multi-channel video installation Anita Glesta has created a triptych of a color saturated garden of Eden, where oranges become the forbidden fruit, where artichokes appear as violently moving snakes, and fish swim in a frenzy on the floor. The images, projected both on the wall and on the floor of the gallery, dissolve, deliquesce, form and re-form; they transform into paintings in flux and sculpture that inhabits the space. 

The poignant and lovely movement of the dancer/choreographer Vanessa Justice, who appears as Eve, captures the gesture of Masaccio’s infamous fresco Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the inspiration for Glesta’s re-interpretation. Projected on the wall as a slow black and white movement, Eve seems to be caught in a post-paradise hell.

Anita Glesta has currently completed a commission for a permanent outdoor integrated landscape sculpture at the Federal Census Bureau Building in Washington DC through the General Services Administration Excellence in Art and Architecture program. Most recently her video installation Gernika/Guernica was shown at White Box Exhibition Space and later as a sound installation public at work at Chase Manhattan Plaza with the LMCC.

Andra Samelson’s sculpture takes its inspiration from her life in the country; from the trees surrounding her studio and the intricate linear network of their branches. Shown at FiveMyles is “Topsy Turvy”, a hanging sculpture of branches and rhizomes resembling a large-scale three-dimensional drawing.  In “Over the River and Through the Woods" these branches and rhizomes seemingly grow through the wall and meander along the gallery floor. By painting and drawing on some of the branches, the artist makes incongruous, surprising juxtapositions as well as allusion to the concept of art as intervention in the natural world. 

A recurring theme in Samelson’s work has been the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The installation, “Round Midnight” is created with multiple slices of trees of various sizes on which she has painted the night sky; they appear to be stepping stones through a world where the universe meets the earth. 

Most recently Andra Samelson’s work was shown at the Rubin Museum in New York City, the Domo Gallery in Summit, NJ, the Fayerweather Gallery at the University of Virginia, the United Nations and the Florence Lynch Gallery in New York City. Her public artwork "Heaven on Earth", commissioned by NJ Transit, was installed in Hoboken, NJ in 2004.

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

acknowledgments:

The Andy Warhol Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Lily Auchincloss Foundation in part funded this exhibition.