MARDEE GOFF
MARTHA RUSSO
coalescere
March 31 – June 12, 2016
The first solo museum exhibition of sculptor and installation artist Martha Russo, coalescere, Latin for “come together,” highlights work created over the course of the artist’s career as well as a series of new works and large-scale, site-specific installations.
Russo’s primary medium is clay, but she is far from a traditional ceramic artist. Her organic, abstract creations push the boundaries of clay, shattering expectations and denying the realities of their heavy and fragile medium. At times anatomical, cellular, botanical, oceanic, or completely fantastical, her forms draw on an encyclopedia of sources and processes.
As an undergraduate, Russo studied developmental biology and psychology. Since then, she has spent decades subverting natural laws and defying scientific certainties through artistic invention. Gravity acts as a counter-medium in her work. Order and crisp typology are mixed with wild abundance and occasional chaos.
With an awareness of the psychology of space, Russo plays with our mind’s ability to react to certain scales and realities. Each element is carefully and uniquely produced by the artist’s hand and amassed into a body that draws us in for closer inspection. Both self-portrait and scientific discovery, her creations span 25 years of intense and exacting labor. Moving through coalescere, we encounter work both unsettlingly alien and achingly familiar. Her work echoes in our bones and guts, and we become another member of the accumulated specimens crawling around the room. It is a dreamscape, petri dish, and archive, and we are invited to explore.
Martha Russo (b. 1962, Connecticut) earned her BA in developmental biology and psychology from Princeton University in 1985. A world-class athlete, she suffered a career-ending injury in 1984 while vying for a spot on the United States Olympic Field Hockey Team. After recovering from surgery, Russo was attracted to the physical nature of sculpture. She studied studio arts in Florence, Italy in 1983 and continued studying ceramics at Princeton University. In 1995, she earned her MFA at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Russo’s work has been exhibited nationally, most recently at The Santa Fe Art Institute, Denver Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and with the Allan Stone Gallery, New York. Through the social and politically based art collective, Artnauts, Russo has shown her 2-dimensional works in 230 exhibitions in 17 countries. Russo lives in the mountains northwest of Boulder, Colorado with her husband and two children. In addition to her studio practice, Russo is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder and taught Fine Arts at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in Lakewood, Colorado for 19 years. Russo is represented by the Claudia Stone Gallery in New York and Goodwin Fine Art in Denver.
Martha Russo:coalescere is an exhibition curated by Mardee Goff and presented at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado.
MARTHA RUSSO
coalescere
March 6 - June 10, 2016
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The exhibition features a new body of paintings by Colorado-based artist Sharon Feder. The new paintings stem from Feder’s long-standing interest in urban archaeology. This series of work is based on photographs Feder has compiled over the last five years of “big-box stores,” such as Target and IKEA, and of vacant and empty store signs. The work explores how the ubiquity of such stores in both urban and rural environments across the country negatively impacts society and nature. For Feder, the empty signs signify the spoiling effects of American mass-consumerism, which leaves an overabundance of things to buy and makes it difficult for small, independently owned stores to survive. The surplus of readily purchasable goods and materials has instilled a greed for convenience that in turn generates a “throw-away society”—whether it is in the product purchased or the unimaginative architectural planning of retail stores built quickly and carelessly to serve the needs of mass-consumerism."ToThe exhibition features a new body of paintings by Colorado-based artist Sharon Feder. The new paintings stem from Feder’s long-standing interest in urban archaeology. This series of work is based on photographs Feder has compiled over the last five years of “big-box stores,” such as Target and IKEA, and of vacant and empty store signs. The work explores how the ubiquity of such stores in both urban and rural environments across the country negatively impacts society and nature. For Feder, the empty signs signify the spoiling effects of American mass-consumerism, which leaves an overabundance of things to buy and makes it difficult for small, independently owned stores to survive. The surplus of readily purchasable goods and materials has instilled a greed for convenience that in turn generates a “throw-away society”—whether it is in the product purchased or the unimaginative architectural planning of retail stores built quickly and carelessly to serve the needs of mass-consumerism.Feder’s approach to painting exists between abstraction and representation. She is interested in both the visual and metaphorical geometry and emptiness of the large retail stores and their signs. Her handling of paint and use of color draw our attention from the subject of the work to the formal elements of the painting. One can look at the works and see color, shapes, and paint, rather than or in addition to the representation of a retail store. Obvious visual references to specific stores, parking lots or buildings remind us that Feder paints scenes mired in quotidian detail.Sharon Feder (b. 1957, Denver, Colorado) is a third-generation Denverite who has studied painting intently since early childhood. Feder’s work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and extensively in the Denver area. Her paintings and murals are included in a number of national and international corporate, private and public collections.BMoCA at Macky is a series of exhibitions curated by BMoCA and presented in the Andrew J. Macky Gallery in the foyer of the Macky Auditorium Concert Hall at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Macky Gallery is located at the intersection of 17th Street and University Avenue on the CU Boulder campus. Admission to the gallery is free and open to the public Monday–Friday, 10am–5pm and to ticketed patrons during Macky Auditorium performances and events. For more information, visit macky.colorado.edu or bmoca.org.add a new question go to app settings and press "Manage Questions" button.