Psyche’s Complex

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Psyche’s Complex
COURTNEY SMITH

Reception Wednesday, October 27, 7-9 PM
Hours: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 12-6 PM
October 27 – December 11, 2004

SATELLITE is extremely pleased to present Psyche’s Complex, an exhibition of a large, multi-phase, transformable sculpture by Courtney Smith.

For her second solo exhibition with Roebling Hall, Courtney Smith presents Psichê Complexo, an intricate sculptural transformation of finely crafted Brazilian furniture from the early 20th Century. Continuing her exploration of deconstructing and reconstructing materials that already exist, in Psichê Complexo, Smith - drawn to the inherent hybridized, even bastardized, forms of Brazilian design that mix art deco and art nouveau design elements with fine craftsmanship and beautiful woods – exploits this dichotomy between the beauty and impurity of the fine but authorless furniture. Smith begins by cutting an armoire, vanity table, stool and two bedside tables; she then reassembles the elements using exposed hinges that contrast starkly with the fine artisan furniture. The hinging system allows the sculpture to be manipulated and reconfigured into many diverse forms, ranging from a self-contained wardrobe to the entire contents of a dressing room.

Playing off of the super feminin nature of the furniture, Smith enhances these qualities while simultaneously morphing them at times through the position of the elements and by exposing the very masculine hardware. Psichê Complexo is both a conceptually metaphorical examination of the complexity of the mind and an investigation of sculptural possibilities through physical transformation. Smith, through her process of deconstruction and reconstruction takes one body and turns it into a space.

Courtney Smith has exhibited in, among other venues, Museo de Arte Moderna São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna Rio de Janeiro, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Museo de Bellas Artes Buenas Aires, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Mexico D.F., Museu de Arte Moderna Salvador, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (São Paulo), Culturgest (Lisbon), Galeria Fortes Vilaça (São Paulo), and will be showing at Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo) in 2005.

Roebling Hall 606 West 26th Street, New York 10001
Nelson Leirner October 23 – November 27

Roebling Hall 390 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn 11211
Doug Young October 29 – November 22, 2004

For further information or images, please contact the gallery or .


 

 

"Copacabana"

 

For Immediate Release

Reception Friday, April 25, 7-9 PM
Hours for the exhibition:
Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday 12-6 PM
April 26 - May 19

Roebling Hall is pleased to announce the first New York gallery exhibition of the highly poetic sculptures of COURTNEY SMITH. Evocatively titled "Copacabana" in reference to the geographic source of Smith's source material, the exhibition presents the artist's signature intricate elaborations on found furniture as vibrant, overgrown metaphors on the theme of the Contemporary Baroque.

Always starting from an existing form that is often a commonplace object, Courtney Smith subjects the pseudo-Louis XVI and Empire furniture she works with to various types of manipulations that suggest, among other things, intense biological and social processes. Cutting, hinging, carving, inserting and grafting onto the recycled "host” object, Smith creates highly original works that invoke both the naturally degenerative order of the body and the relentless disorder of social architecture.

Promoting, in the artist's words, "the favelization of the romantic ideal," Smith's sculptures transform the surfaces and functions of their basic forms either by a process of wild addition or through a complex system of erasure. One set of works piles mountains of hard-edged square and rectangular modules onto filigreed furniture, while another carves detailed ornamental patterns on the wood's skin. The artist's drawings, for their part, trace the organic and parasitical lines that afflict the host objects on paper, appearing like samples of some imaginary but perversely beautiful virus.

Sculptural distillations of the world's cross-cultural traffic, Smith's hybrid objects speak to myriad processes of globalization in a language opposite to that of the official lingo of governments and international agencies. Organic and resistant to political and sociological interpretation, Courtney Smith's sculptures exist as degenerated, overdeveloped entities shining in the beauty of their brazen novelty.

Courtney Smith has or will exhibit her highly innovative work at, among other venues, the XVIII Bienal de la Habana, Museu do Paco Imperial (Rio de Janeiro), Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Niteroi, XXIV Bienal de Sao Paulo, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico D.F.) and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid). She is represented by Galeria Fortes Vilaca in Brazil and Roebling Hall.

 

 

Adriana Arenas - Erik Benson - Jane Benson - Sebastiaan Bremer - Paul Campbell - Christoph Draeger

Nancy Drew - Richard Galpin -Dan Ford- Cadence Giersbach - Deborah Grant - Kevin Francis Gray
Kysa Johnson - Nelson Leirner - Bjørn Melhus - Christoph Morlinghaus - Ivan Navárro -David Opdyke
Reynold Reynolds & Patrick Jolley - Guy Richards Smit - Courtney Smith - Spessi - Eve Sussman

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Roebling Hall : Manhattan
Roebling Hall : Brooklyn
606 West 26th St
390 Wythe Ave (at South 4th St)
New York 10001
Brooklyn 11211
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