Exhibition
Athena LaTocha
7 Nov 2015 – 19 Dec 2015
Regular hours
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 17:30
- Friday
- 10:00 – 17:30
Address
- 137 W 25th St
- New York
New York - 10001
- United States
CUE is honored to present a solo exhibition of new work by Athena LaTocha, which has been generously curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
About
The show features a large-scale immersive installation of an ink-wash drawing by LaTocha that spans the entire length of the gallery. While the work depicts a landscape, its more abstract elements leave the viewer to decipher what they see.
The Project Space features a small selection of new paintings by Curator-Mentor, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, in celebration and in recognition of LaTocha and Smith's relationship.
ARTIST STATEMENT
By reducing the palette, I center the imagery on dynamic gesture and atmosphere that recall the powerful forces of nature and the human impact upon the world. My images begin with my memory of Alaska—specifically the irony between vast magnitudes of raw nature and the impact of industrial development upon nature.
I work rigorously between large and small scale. Incessant questioning and doubt play a large role in how I work in a repetitive, serial mode. Working aerially with my images on the floor, I am interested in being inside the image rather than the outside as an easel painter.
I use intuitive processes and chance operations to tear down and rebuild landscape iconographies, turning to unwieldy and unorthodox tools to assist with this approach. Tools such as cracked rocks, concrete bricks, and reclaimed automobile tire shred—which I pick up off the sides of highways—are favored over traditional painting and drawing tools. The steel radial from the tire shred literally cuts and bites through the medium and into the support, while it conceptually cuts into the metaphorical landscapes.