For Knots and Conceits, artist Cece Cole used her fascination with horticulture, technology, weather, stellar skies and unexplained phenomena as a starting point to examine the landscape of Wave Hill. In doing so, she approached the Sunroom from the perspective of a mad scientist, re-imagining the space as a fantastical laboratory filled with playful inventions and intriguing accumulations of objects. Working on-site over a two-month period, she took long walks on the grounds, absorbing the shapes and contours of the gardens. She then used this visual information to create a mass of colorful, diagrammatic drawings and sculptural vignettes. Arranged througout the room in a deliberately improvised way, they affect a sense of immediacy and temporality. The result is a sprawling, carnivalesque installation that is densely packed with whimsy and detail.
Cole has assembled a disparate collection of materials, both found and fabricated, and she has combined these items in provocative ways, challenging the viewer’s perceptions of them and transforming the mundane into the extraordinary. For example, she intends for a constellation of salvaged industrial mirrors to mimic a solar panel, and a re-fashioned light fixture to suggest a primitive satellite. At the same time, the hand-made aesthetic of Cole’s work gives her compositions an intensely personal feel, imparting a measure of accessibility to the work that counters its lofty intentions. The artist states that she wants the piece to conjure up “visions of the impractically idealistic;” to this end she provides the viewer with an entrance to a futuristic world of wonder, invention and imminent discovery.
Cece Cole’s solo exhibitions include This is where the magic happens, at Kunstoffice in Berlin, Germany, in 2007, and Lure of the Lore at the Solvent Space Gallery in Richmond, VA, in 2005. In 2008, her work appeared in ibid, a traveling exhibition that is currently on view at Galeria Z in Bratislova, Slovakia. Previous locations include Berlin, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; and ITAMI-shi Hyogo, Japan. Cole is an active member of the collective Paintallica, whose most recent exhibition, War Party, was part of PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival in Portland, OR. She has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. She received a BFA from the University of Louisiana, LA, and a joint MFA and MA from the University of Iowa, IA.
Organized by Assistant Curator Leigh Ross, the Sunroom Project Space provides an opportunity for New York-area emerging artists to develop a special project or create a new body of work to exhibit in a solo show. The five artists exhibiting in the 2009 season are: Cece Cole, Steven Millar, Janelle Iglesias, Audrey Hasen Russell and Mauro Zamora.
Public Programs
March 15, 2pm, Meet the Artist. Cece Cole discusses Knots and Conceits in the Sunroom Project Space.
March 7 & 8, 1–4pm, The Family Art Project: Spinning with the Wind. Invent a whirligig built with recycled and craft materials that will spin playfully in the wind, with help from Cece Cole.
More information is available at:
Cece Cole’s blog: http://cccole.blogspot.com/
Cece Cole’s Knots and Conceits blog: http://rainbowstacy.blogspot.com/
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