Metaphorpressrelease

METAPHOR CONTEMPORARY ART

NINA LEVY:
OTHER PEOPLE'S HEADS
OCTOBER 9 - NOVEMBER 10, 2002
70 WASHINGTON STREET, SUITE 1113
D.U.M.B.O. BROOKLYN 11201
TEL 718 254 9126
WWW.METAPHORCONTEMPORARYART.COM

GALLERY PRESS RELEASE:

"Other People's Heads is a series of portrait heads of artists, dealers, curators and critics. The heads are modeled from observation and then cast and painted in resin and fiberglass and are slightly smaller than life size. They are hung from the ceiling at the eye level of the subjects, creating the illusion of a room full of people without the bodies. The very life like nature of her sculptures allows for intimate examination of another, such as one normally only experiences with lovers and small children, This series of art world personalities, all professional "eyes" are now on display for the visitor to scrutinize them.

Nina Levy has acquired renown through her wry and challenging installations utilizing her own body as the model for her resin sculptures which explore notions of scale disjunction, and challenge the viewers' gaze.

Educated at Yale and University of Chicago, Nina Levy's work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, and the New Yorker. She was a fellow at Art Omi in the summer of 2002. She presented a highly acclaimed piece at Eyewash @ Holland Tunnel, Williamsburg in the winter of 2002, and was in the well received "Terrors and Wonders: Monsters in Contemporary Art" at the DeCordova Museum in 2001. Her most recent installation was presented in September 2002 at Feigen Contemporary, Chelsea.

Located in the artists' warehouse district neighborhood of D.U.M.B.O., Brooklyn, metaphor contemporary art continues in its second season exhibiting the works of mid career and emerging artists working in all media.

                        THE PORTRAIT PROJECT:
                    (ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY)

The portrait heads in this exhibition are part of an ongoing series which I have been working on over the last few years, and intend to continue indefinitely into the future.

I have always been interested in the conventions of the portrait as it is a staple of sculpture through much of art history. The way in which a head is both terminated and displayed are crucial formal considerations that have definite psychological and metaphorical implications.

I am interested in making these heads into autonomous objects, therefore each is rounded into a complete form rather than ended in a cut at the neck.   I hope that hanging them at eye level helps to create a suspension of disbelief, allowing the viewer to see the head in its own space, literally and symbolically. As they are at the eye level of each individual, they are in the location that one would encounter the face of the actual person in a social situation. The installation as a whole is designed to evoke the social environment of an opening- clusters of people who would be likely to attend a reception in a white- box gallery space.

Sculpted and painted from observation, these heads are not intended to be hyper-real or special effect-like. They are effigies rather than literal stand-ins for their subjects. I am interested in the problem of achieving a "likeness" as it is both essential to the idea of a portrait and, yet largely irrelevant to the idea of a sculpture. I do think that the specificity and attention involved in achieving a likeness transcend the simple recognizability of a given individual.

These portraits are in one sense a contrast to my other work. In many of my other projects, I use my own head and body as source material. In those pieces, I am interested in treating myself as a stand in for an "everyman" or perhaps an "every woman" and am not interested so specifically in the sculptures or photographs as portraits of an individual.