|
Opening reception:
Friday, January 8, 6 - 10 pm
Sarah Steinwachs' BetweenSpaces series of works is constructed
primarily from intricately hand cut paper layers that are superimposed
on top, or in front of one another. The influence for this work
comes from cities in which she has lived over the past 19 years
(Philadelphia, Rome, Tokyo, Boston, and New Haven). The urban
landscape for her is an arena of non-stop visual information that
is a physical extension of ourselves both individually and as
a society. The scope of this visual matter is magnificent: from
sky scrapers to sprawling neighborhoods, to the voyeuristic glance
into the window of a row home. Every time there is a scale shift,
spaces are created between other spaces that invariably are filled
with something else. The in-between spaces are microscopic versions
of larger ones. These constructions represent those spaces. Even
though the themes for these works come from urban spaces, the
inspiration comes from the process itself. Often times, starting
out with a manufactured sheet of graph paper, she cut out the
spaces between the lines of the grid, to create patterns. Since
nothing is more perfect than a piece of graph paper, no matter
how ordered the work, it will always be imperfect. The act of
making the work simultaneously celebrates the human need for order
and the unforeseen forces that allow unexpected things to happen.
It is an acceptance that perfection is transient, and that beauty
is not in perfections alone, but being able to see that something
was once perfect. The gradations of new to old, rational to irrational,
controlled and uncontrolled, self conscious and candid that are
intertwined in a city, makes one accept that beauty encompasses
this contrast and that it is not selective.
|
