Foundations. New Sculpture by Kimberly Mayhorn and A.V. Ryan

About

Kimberly Mayhorn sees the world "as a lexicon of invisible grids and how bodies move through them." She constructs her sculptures with industrial materials - steel, cement, wood and plaster, but with the intent of striping away the initial purpose of the materials by freeing the material from its established connotations to create a new contemporary language for the work. Mayhorn is interested in exploring how our environment and geographic influence - such as redlining, dictates how we think, move, and process our ideas and ideologies in the world.

A.V. Ryan makes sculpture that stands "as a foil to the grid and everything the grid excludes, all that pulsing, living, breathing life." Her elegant forms draw on long standing traditions of sculpture with allusions to the body and draperies. Ryan's forms are seemingly undulating and round; she builds them up slowly, using thin layers of paper, joint compound and gessoes. They allude to the body and to cloth without being quite either; and these large sculptures exude the pleasure of touching and being touched. 

About the Artists:

Kimberly Mayhorn is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist utilizing installation, sculpture, theatre, dance, sound and film/video. She is a Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Fellow, and was selected by Essence magazine as one of "30 Women to Watch.”  She has shown in a variety of institutions such as The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Rush Arts in New York, Aljira in Newark, The African American Museum in Philadelphia, The University Museum at Texas Southern University in Houston, and the African American Museum in Dallas. She has also collaborated with choreographers Dai Jian, Shalewa Mackall and the late Lowell Dennis Smith.