Concrete Sound
: an installation by Audra Wolowiec
Oct 28 - Nov 20, 2011
exhibition includes a collaborative publication commissioned by Norte Maar with poetry by Christine Shan Shan Hou and artwork by Audra Wolowiec
also on view:
new paintings by Lindsay Walt and collages by Man Bartlett
Norte Maar, 83 Wyckoff Avenue, #1B, Brooklyn
Bushwick, Brooklyn — Norte Maar is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Brooklyn-based artist Audra Wolowiec. The exhibition will feature Concrete Sound, a sculptural installation made up of several hundred specifically rendered cast concrete sculptures that together explore the physicality of sound through shifts in materiality. Concrete Sound continues Norte Maar’s commissioning program to encourage, promote and support new initiatives in art making and will include a corresponding publication in collaboration between Wolowiec and writer and poet Christine Shan Shan Hou. A reading of the poet's work takes place on Thursday, November 17, 7:30pm.
Also on exhibition are new paintings by Lindsay Walt and recent collage by Man Bartlett.
The opening reception will coincide with the bi-annual BEAT NITE: Bushwick Art Spaces Stay Open Late, October 28, from 6-10PM, thereafter the exhibition will be open by appointment. A reading with writer Christne Shan Shan Hou is scheduled for Thursday, November 17 at 7:30pm. For more information, please call 646-361-8512 or visit www.nortemaar.org
Based on acoustic foam used in anechoic chambers, Audra Wolowiec has created a modular series of cast concrete sculptures that accumulate to form muted landscapes. She is interested in how concrete is etymologically linked to language as explored through concrete poetry and also the role it has played in early communication devices. On the coasts of England, large cement domes called acoustic mirrors once used to detect sounds from oncoming troops, lay dormant as reminders of the tactile nature of analog technology.
The publication which accompanies the exhibition is based on a conversation between Hou and Wolowiec, and acts as an extension of the installation. Based on an email exchange of images and text over a one-month period, it is a dialogic experiment that unfolds the poetics of responding.
Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, MI, living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work mines themes of communication, voice, and modes of exchange. In recreating natural phenomena and trace effects, she explores the idea of a fading connection to create an elusive but shared experience. She received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has shown work at Magnan-Metz (New York), Pocket Utopia (Brooklyn), and The Museum of New Art (Detroit). This past April, her sound score was featured in Norte Maar’s multi-media collaborative ballet titled In the Use of Others for the Change (2011). She has received an audio commission by Art in General (New York) and was recently featured in Thresholds Magazine, MIT Department of Architecture.Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet and arts writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Publication Studio published her first book of poetry, Accumulations in 2010. Additional poems appear in Weekday, EOAGH, and Parallelograms. She has curated exhibitions at Art in General and Jack the Pelican Presents. Her awards include The Flow Chart Foundation/The Academy for American Poets and the Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship. She currently runs the New York City education programs at Dia Art Foundation and is a dance critic for The Brooklyn Rail.
New Paintings by Lindsay Walt
Lindsay Walt creates paintings exploring a sensory imagined space. The work describes an ethereal night sky, or, the moment a great wave breaks, as a perceptual meditation on the fleeting nature of time.
“I start by layering thin oil washes of intense color on wooden panels to create a liquid smooth ground, not unlike ceramic glaze. My interest in ornamental arts, such as beading and lacework, as well as Islamic and Delft tiles, Mogul paintings and children’s string games come into play. Manipulating the ebb and flow of paint, I weave spidery delicate lines and tiny dots. Stroke by stroke small marks accumulate to form elaborate configurations.” — Lindsay Walt
Walt’s recent paintings imagine a glimpse of what’s left behind, a momentary pause, like when Icarus falls unnoticed from the sky. She envisions an amorphous location where land and sea merge: or, the dislocation between where one thing begins and another ends. Other paintings allude to a state of weightlessness: floating, flying, and most particularly, dreaming, free from the constraints of gravity and time.
Recent Collages by Man Bartlett
Man Bartlett is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Bushwick. Originally from Philadelphia, he graduated with a BA in Theatre Studies from Emerson College in 2003. His collages source Americana advertising images between the 1940s and 1960s as a means to subvert notions of both identity and consumption. All of the images are from a single publication, Holiday Magazine. Bartlett also creates performances that incorporate social media as a means of facilitating passively participatory experiences with virtual audiences. These have taken place in venues, galleries, and institutions around the world. Bartlett’s work has been written about or featured in Art in America (online), ARTnews, Huffington Post Arts, C Magazine (cover image), The Daily News, artnet, Art Fag City, Hyperallergic, and The Stranger, among others.
