 Mirror, glass, metal; 26 x 34 x 5"; 1998 Donna Nield Circulator De Chiara Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Circulator, a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based Canadian artist Donna Nield. Circulator creates an elusive and whimsical dialogue between public nature and composed architecture. In its many representations of the constructed environment, Circulator continues Nield's investigation into possibility and limitation, movement and travel, surface and penetrability. Large scale soft sculpture, a globe-encircling video, an ambiguous tunnel photograph and giant potted trees. build their own fictions, reorganizing repetition into possibility, barricades into tunnels. Playing with geometric forms and modern aesthetics, the 12 sections of Modular Tunnel can be arranged and rearranged to create multiple aboveground pathways. Designed to form a closed unit when placed in a circular configuration, Modular Tunnel can also be reconfigured to create a tunnel-path that can be entered by the viewer. Here the tunnel takes the viewer on a disorienting trip through the gallery. The idea of circular travel continues in Whole World, a video that goes on an abstract looping trip around an idealized grassy surface of the earth. On a journey that goes nowhere and everywhere, the earth is objectified into a distilled surface with no entrance or exit. Snow Tunnel, a photograph of a tunnel Nield dug in the snow, creates a pathway that leads anywhere. The raw material of nature is shaped by the artist to form a ludicrously pure gesture—an infinite tunnel. The photograph oscillates between two and three dimensions, between permanence and the ephemeral. Nield’s Potted Trees are full-scale foam models of the large potted trees found in public/corporate spaces. On a giant scale within the gallery space, these soft white sculptures seem ghost-like and looming. Awkwardly crammed into the gallery space, these normally invisible objects become provocatively present. Circulator is on view at De Chiara Gallery through April 20th. An expanded version will be exhibited at müllerdechiara in Berlin in October, 2002. March 22 - April 20, 2002 Tuesday-Saturday: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Laurie De Chiara De Chiara Gallery 521 West 26th Street, Lower Level New York, NY 10001 t. +1 212 967 6007 f. +1 212 967 1604 E-Mail office@dechiaragallery.com www.dechiaragallery.com |
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