For AbstrACTION, Ms. Meyers-Kingsley, has invited 15 contemporary artists into the show that focuses on the action that has taken place to render the work abstract. "Art making is a process," she says. "Contemporary artists engage in many actions or decisions: physical, aesthetic, and intellectual, in making their work. Most shows of abstract, non-objective art work highlight the abstraction as content; I am interested in it as a process. Taking this approach, I hope viewers will view abstraction in a brand new way."
AbstrACTION will include works in a variety of media including sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, video, and performance-with some of the artists enacting or adding to their work during the run of the show. Six of the artists will be making new, site-specific installations.
For example, artist Steven Gwon has a daily drawing practice in which he charts the date and time of the rising and setting sun. He is going to bring that practice right into the gallery by adding drawings throughout the exhibition. For this piece, entitled "six months" Gwon's delicate pencil drawings on graph paper, will grow from spring into summer.
Growing is also going to happen in the Arts Exchange's sculpture court when Donna Sharrett creates an abstract stick sculpture planted with native vines that echoes the structure of the bank building's metal windows.
Other artists who play off the architecture of the space include Mike Childs, who will be painting a mural directly on the wall of the gallery-turning the exhibition space into his studio, and Kirsten Nelson who will be creating an architectural intervention in the space.
The curator claims that the work of Tavares Strachan, gives viewers a new way of considering abstraction. Strachan is a native of the Bahamas who is studying to be an astronaut. His body of work is currently being featured in an exhibition at MIT entitled "Tavares Strachan: Orthostatic Tolerance, It Might Not be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home."
In the field of aeronautics, "tolerance" refers to the pressure that an object can withstand before coming apart. This idea is also examined in a work that Strachan will display in AbstrACTION entitled "The Problem of One Thing Existing Simultaneously #4." Strachan discovered a shattered beer bottle that he replicates in cast glass and places side by side with the original fragment in a vitrine. Beyond examining the physics of objects coming apart under pressure, the piece examines the often blurred boundary between representation and abstract objects.
Adds ArtsWestchester Executive Director Janet T. Langsam, "Each year, we cast a wide net in order to showcase new work by a selection of outstanding artists who live, work or are connected in some way to Westchester.
Participating AbstrACTION artists include:
| ARTIST | MEDIUM - PROCESS |
| Mike Childs | Painting - including site-specific painting |
| Kit Fitzgerald | Video installation, digital prints |
| Steven Gwon | Drawings/installation |
| Erik Hanson | Painting |
| Arnold Kastenbaum | Photography |
| Henry Mandell | Large scale digital prints |
| Creighton Michae | Painting |
| Kirsten Nelson | Sculpture/ drawing/site specific installation |
| Lori Nozick | Site specific installation |
| Jason Repolle | Drawing |
| Tom Sarver | Kinetic sculpture |
| Donna Sharrett | Mixed media, garden installation |
| Tavares Strachan | Sculpture/work on paper |
| Danielle Tegeder | Drawing/painting/animated video |
| Tricia Wright | Work on paper/mixed media |
The Absence - Mike Childs
ArtsWestchester is your connection to the arts. Founded in 1965, it is the largest, private, not-for-profit arts council in New York State; its mission is to provide leadership, vision, and support, to ensure the availability, accessibility, and diversity of the arts. ArtsWestchester provides programs and services that enrich Westchester: our grants help fund concerts, exhibitions and plays; we bring artists into schools and community centers; we advocate for the arts and build audiences through our marketing initiatives. In 1998, ArtsWestchester purchased the nine-story neo-classical bank building at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue which has since been transformed into
the Arts Exchange, a multi-use resource for artists, cultural organizations, and the community.
Images Photographed by Alan Weiner
