April 1 - may 7, 2023
opening reception: Saturday, April 1, 5:30-8pm
Two artists
mildred Beltré - Elisa D’Arrigo
This exhibition presents Elisa D’Arrigo’s sculptural work from the 1990s and early 2000s, and recent prints by Mildred Beltré. Since 2010 D'Arrigo has made and exhibited ceramic work that explores improvisational process, thickly glazed surfaces, and animated sculptural form within the context of the ceramic vessel. A strong correlation exists between the earlier mixed media works in the exhibition at FiveMyles and the artist’s current ceramic sculptures. The most obvious continuance lies in the mysteries each one of D’Arrigo’s works implies. Are they artifacts left behind by an earlier, alien civilization? Are they emotions transformed into clay, rope, wire, cloth or stitches? These works very much engage us with the physical process of art making: the relationship between labor and time, the tension between weight and gravity.
The most recent of these works, the wall piece Time and Time Again (2005) takes its strength from the irregularity of the grid, the anxious restlessness of thousands of stitches and the soothing shades of the black and gray of the fabric, repurposed from clothing worn by D’Arrigo’s family over the years. It is the relentless action of the hand making these stitches that adds the weight of time to this work.
An earlier work, the floor sculpture First Frost 2 (1992), with its dense bud-like center and trailing stem approximates a botanical fragment lying on a field; something both from nature and hand-made. Its exposed ribbed structure of coated wire looks organic, like woven vines. But the mystery of its origin is lightened by the hand that lets you feel its work – patting the clay in place, entwining a part of the sculpture with rope. For each of the five sculptures in the exhibition the hand is their great collaborator.
Mildred Beltré produces prints and drawings using abstracted personal imagery. Coating paper with walnut ink that she makes herself, Beltre uses photographic information filtered through the language of the dot pattern. The artist explores questions of proximity and perception: the closer you are to the image, the more difficult it is to see it. And the further away you are from it, the more you can discern the details, and perhaps the identity of the image.
Beltré, a printmaker by training, also makes white line woodcuts. White line woodcuts are characterized by their white outlines around shapes, as well as their soft colors. To create a woodcut in this manner, Beltre hand-colors and prints each shape. It is an iterative on-going process of painting and printing, until the image is completed.
SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 4-6PM:
Etty Yaniv, the artist/curator and publisher of the online magazine Art Spiel, will lead a walk-through of the exhibition with Beltré and D’Arrigo.
GALLERY HOURS:
Thursday - Sunday, 1 - 6pm, or by appointment. Please email hanne@fivemyles.org, or call 718-783-4438.
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 Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Perlemeter Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.