The Body In Eden

Wayfarers Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, January 2015

Wayfarers Gallery and ArtShape Mammoth are pleased to present The Body in Eden, an eight person group show exploring memory and body parts as fragmented and obscured, real and implied. The body passes through space leaving the space affected, sometimes chewed up and always changed. In some cases the viewer is the body as the scale of the work invites her in. The mere trace of the body may be all that marks the final work, and the painting, fired clay, cast bronze and stone sculpture exhibited here are in easy dialogue about the body as a vessel of nostalgia or record of memory, scarred document of past stimuli.

Curated by Margaret Coleman

The Body in Eden runs January 9th - February 1st, 2015

Opening Reception Friday, January 9th from 7-10 pm at Brooklyn Wayfarers

When we look at fragments of the body, or an implied body, can we for a little while, cease to be ourselves? This show proposes that new ground can be covered through juxtaposition of fragments and materials that create a passage and a boundary all the while using the body as a threshold.

Several of the artists work in traces, evidence or insinuations of the body or at least the memory of it. In Jennifer McCandless’s ceramic sculptures, she explores the liminal place between representation and abstraction, as her sculptures morph into flesh-like sinews. Joan Harmon’s cast glass ceiling installation demonstrates psychological evidence of the physical body. Leslie Fry’s ceramic forms emulate isolated elements of human anatomy each reflecting architectural details. Jane Gordon uses ceramics as well, to reference the body in relationship to an underlying narrative of survival.

Jordan Cooperman’s paintings contain full bodies abstracted into their surrounding settings while in Maureen O'Leary ’s painting, the complete lack of a person becomes a walk-in American Eden, an idyllic if slightly menacing East Coast forest that the viewer can observe as if he/she were alone in it when looking on in the gallery. Melissa Sclafani’s performance turned sculpture demonstrates a trace element of the body, physical remainders left behind as evidence of the body’s presence and activity. Kevin Donegan works in stone, using a solid material to explore the body as a threshold, on a continuum of change.

Wayfarers is a Brooklyn-based studio program that offers qualifying members private studios, access to a wood shop, and a solo-show in the on-site gallery.  All exhibits are free and open to the public.  In addition to shows, Wayfarers also hosts regular critiques, drawing parties, group shows, live music, experimental performances, puppetry projects, readings, video screenings, skill-shares, and other inventive events.  For more info visit www.brooklynwayfarers.org

Wayfarers Gallery is open Sundays from 1-5pm

1109 Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 1122