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FAMILY RESEMBLANCE PRESS RELEASE:
metaphor
contemporary art is pleased to announce the
exhibition; Nina Levy; Family Resemblance, an installation of large scale sculptures
and photographs February 17, March 19, 2006. The reception is Friday,
February 17, from 6-9 pm, at 382 Atlantic Avenue between Hoyt and Bond Streets
in downtown Brooklyn. Gallery hours are Thurs-Sun:12-6 pm.
Nina Levy is an extraordinary hyper realistic figurative sculptor whose
inventive use of the human form is turned to an examination of the physical and
the psychic, often focusing attention to the sometimes mutual discomfort of one
with the other. Through precise modeling, skillful use of polychrome,
fragmentation, and disjunctive scale, Levy works the volatile side of the
mind/body connection. Her well known sculptural installations and photography
have explored alienation and loss, identity, and parenthood through a sharply
focused, wry and reductive sensibility. It is a strength of her work that a
single figure can both surprise and startle while eliciting a strongly
sympathetic response in the viewer.
Nina
Levy models her sculpture from observation and then introduces a distortion,
alteration in scale, or fragmentation, they
do not involve life casting. Previously, Levy took herself as the point of
departure in her work using her own body as source material. In her recent work,
and in this exhibition in particular, she has shifted the focus to her family
and the psychological complexities of parenting. The central sculpture
installation Toss
was created specifically as a response to the space of the gallery, the height
of the ceiling and the potential to see an installation from multiple
perspectives; from below and above from the mezzanine floor as well as from
outside through the glass façade of the gallery. Toss consists of
three components, two headless adults and a giant child's head. The adults are
approximately life size, the child's head is about 5 feet tall and hangs
slightly overhead. His expression is ambiguous, but he is engaged. The two
parents are frozen in mid swing on facing trapeze swings anchored from opposite
ends of the gallery as if they are tossing the child’s head between them. The
head is slightly beyond both of their grasp and clearly dwarfs them. The three
pieces are cast in polyester and painted with oil paint. Husband and Son was
conceived for the front window, and is a life-size sculpture of Levy’s husband
and son, the son sitting on the shoulders of the father, however the father’s
head is missing. The child has replaced the adult head. The pose is
companionable, and the lack of a head is not perceptible from certain views. The
adult body is both literally and metaphorically a plinth for the child.
The son
has supplanted the father, perhaps in relation
to his mother or spouse, or perhaps in the father’s relation to himself.
Monster
in a Box was designed to sit in the area near the stairs, out of the way
a bit, so that one would have to walk around it to see it. It depicts a life
size sculpture of Levy’s husband crouched in a box. As Levy explains it;
“The cardboard box for this piece was originally Archer’s “house,” a box
altered for the most “peek-a-boo” potential.
It played a role as the Dad-as-Monster game that Archer enjoys so much,
when we discovered that Dad just fits inside the box the result was remarkably
creepy. I am somewhat bemused by how much Archer, and most children his age,
enjoy, and seem to need to be frightened by their father. But an adult squeezed
into a child’s space, and dismembered into various peek-a-boo windows is
rather monstrous even from an adult perspective.”
Additionally, Levy is presenting a new series of
fujiflex photographic prints of herself interacting with sculptural
prostheses. Unlike so much contemporary photography, these photographic images
are not digitally manipulated. Close inspection reveals that the disjunctive
body parts are in fact real, three-dimensional objects that are sculpted out of
resin or plaster. The odd
combinations and scale disjunctions create a dream like logic. Like the tour de
force sculptures in the exhibition, these works also explore the role of the
individual ego in relation to the empirical demands of family.
Nina
Levy has exhibited widely in the United States. In 2003 metaphor
contemporary art premiered the exhibit of her widely acclaimed portrait
series of sculpted art world heads titled ‘Other People’s Heads’. Reviewed
in both Art in America and
Sculpture Magazines these were subsequently exhibited at the Aldrich Museum,
Ridgefield, Connecticut, the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, and are slated for
exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. in 2006.
Additionally Levy has exhibited at the Neuberger, and DeCordova Museums, and
made site-specific outdoor installations at the Aldrich Museum and the MCA in
San Diego. Upcoming shows will include an individual project at the reopening of
the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. in 2006 and an installation at the
inaugural exhibition for the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Her work has been
featured in numerous publications. Most recently an extensive interview with
Levy was published in the November 2005 issue of Sculpture Magazine. A detail of
her sculpture ‘Stroller’ 2004, was used for the cover of the December 2004
issue of ARTnews illustrating their cover story on new figurative sculpture.
Additionally Levy has had reviews and articles in the New Yorker, the New York
Times, Art in America, the New York Observer, TimeOut NY, the New York Sun, the
Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New Art Examiner, and many other
publications. Nina Levy received her BA from Yale in 1989, and her MFA from
University of Chicago in 1993.
metaphor contemporary art
is located between Hoyt and Bond Streets in downtown Brooklyn, 10 minutes from
Manhattan near the B.A.M. cultural center.
by subway: F train to Bergen St., A/C/G train to Hoyt – Schermerhorn,
4 or 5 to Nevins St., 2 or 3 to Hoyt
by car: from Manhattan via Brooklyn Bridge: exit Brooklyn Bridge
and continue straight ahead to Atlantic Ave., from Manhattan via Manhattan
Bridge: exit Manhattan Bridge and continue straight ahead on Flatbush Ave, turn
right to Atlantic Ave. other points of departure: BQE to Atlantic Ave exit parking:
easy street parking with inexpensive meters right on the block or with no meters
around the corner
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