Sculpture – Two Artists

Monique Luchetti + Merrill Wagner

on view: September 22 – October 28, 2012
opening Reception: Saturday, September 29, 6–8pm

FiveMyles is pleased to announce a two-artist sculpture exhibition: Monique Luchetti shows new wall and floor sculptures and Merrill Wagner shows two tall, wall-mounted steel flowers.

In Luchetti’s work birds tethered to one another by their tails coalesce into mandalas gone awry. Linear elements form knots, traps and spheres - tangling the birds into beautiful structures that attract and ensnare. Taken as an exploration of the limitations of free will, Luchetti’s work presents a poetics of Darwin’s finches, revealing the binding ties to be more powerful than each individual.

Luchetti’s approach to materials, decoration and color is eccentrically formal, verging on funk. Her sculptures, ranging from intimate wall pieces to a mixed media installation, are fabricated from plaster, steel and found materials, then selectively covered with tautly stretched swimsuit fabric, stockings or paint. Wryly referencing the natural markings of animals, the birds’ ‘plumage’ evokes notions of status, hierarchy and social ritual.

Merrill Wagner’s two large, 7 and 8 ft. tall, wall-mounted steelflowers live as much within the negative spaces as the positive ones. They are simultaneously quietly meditative and stridently urban – smooth curves and soft colors contrast withthe sharp edges of heavy raw steel. Her simplified forms capture essential aspects of the source, but don’t overly rely on their namesakes. The work functions both figuratively and as an abstract composition focused on rhythm, pattern and movement transmitted through the use of purposeful, unequally weighted negative spaces.

As Roger Boyce noted in an Art in America review about Merrill Wagner’s work: "The material gravity and anonymous esthetic of the industrially manufactured [materials] stand in for the assertive indifference and receptive sublimity of nature.

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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

FiveMyles is in part supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Public Funds from the New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Laurie Cumbo, the Greenwich Collection, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and Humanities NY.