Underdonk

press release

May 14th – June 19th, 2022

Co-organized by Leonora Loeb and Elisa Soliven

Opening reception Saturday, May 14th, 6-8 pm

Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 1-6pm

     Underdonk is pleased to present “Modular Mosaic”, co-organized by Leonora Loeb and Elisa Soliven.  This group exhibition consists of twelve artists, including Eleanna Anagnos, Zoë Cohen, Rachel Frank, Priscilla Fusco, ann/drew gayle, Sue Havens, Matt Merkle Hess, Steve Keister, Alison Kudlow, Pooneh Maghazehe, Dionis Ortiz, and Eun-Ha Paek.  Utilizing a range of materials, including paper pulp, wood, fabric, ceramics, glass, and resin, each artist constructs their piece using modular parts that fit together to form their work.  The artists in “Modular Mosaic” explore a range of ideas and materials, at times overlapping in conceptual exploration such as societal and technological refuse, overlooked packaging and disregarded materials, and the mining of historical mark-making.

      In the mid-90s, Steve Keister developed the idea of an “ancient-modern” correlation, seeing the connection between his collection of styrofoam cartons and the inspiration that he gathered from sculptural relief forms of ancient Mesoamerican architecture. Through casting and mold-making techniques, his work embodies this correlation in “Pilaster”, a stack of seven-colored monochrome plaques.  Sue Havens also works with modular ceramic parts and a synthesis of language that is both contemporary and ancient.  Shifting between painting and sculpture, Havens works “with indexical painting languages from a broad history in New York, (her) surroundings in Tampa, and from hundreds of photographs from Turkey.”  Eleanna Anagnos likewise explores the intersection between the ancient and modern, utilizing cotton and linen fibers, clay, rock specimens, and oil in her practice.

     Pooneh Maghazehe’s sculptures combine materials in an unpredictable fashion. Often working with molds, repeated forms become unique as they are layered with Maghazehe’s unlikely studio materials- layers of materials like spray foam, paper pulp, and even remnants of a kiddie pool, become skins covering these forms.  Dionis Ortiz similarly incorporates discarded and often overlooked materials, such as cardboard and linoleum, in the studio.  In his words, Ortiz’s works “celebrate the aesthetics of Afro Caribbean diasporic communities and create empathy across people of color.”  Zoë Cohen burnishes marks into wood tiles, maintaining a desired flatness and an orientation towards the object, as opposed to the image, in her piece, “Assembled (with Open Forms)”.

     Rachel Frank uses fabric, clay, and a host of other materials.  She makes large-scale sculptural objects that engage with natural history, extinction, and climate change.  Alison Kudlow combines the materials of ceramics and glass and through a science of varying melting temperatures which captures glass in motion.  Both ann/drew gayle and Priscilla Fusco use the technique of nerikomi, a ceramic marbling technique first done in ancient times that incorporates modules of colored clay into a design that can be repeated throughout a work.  gayle forms irregular vessel shapes that have a stained glass effect, as light passes through them.  Fusco makes square tiles using the nerikomi, but adds a relief component that takes on naturalistic forms and references their own histories in contemporary news, fashion, and surrealism.  Also working in clay, Matthias Merkel Hess explores mass-produced forms and icons of pop culture while celebrating the handmade and the possibilities of clay.  Eun-Ha Paek, using a 3D printing machine, translates traditional ceramic-making techniques into clay forms.  She investigates the process/object duality and the fissure that occurs between the machine and how it transmits the hand of the maker.  For her, “these works are an ongoing dialogue between the machine and myself.”  

     The artists in the show make forms that are often replicated and assembled, reconsidered, and reassembled.  While looking at various cultural histories and contemporary issues, the works in “Modular Mosaic” use interdependent parts to make a whole. 

About the artists

Eleanna Anagnos (she/her) (b.1980, Evanston, IL) is a Greek-American artist and curator residing in Mexico City and New York City. She investigates intersections and thresholds between painting, drawing and sculpture and shifts perceptual values through the manipulation of material hierarchies, processes, and identity.  Eleanna earned her MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art and a BA with honors and distinction from Kenyon College with a concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been featured in The New York Times, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Maake Magazine, and Artnet.  Eleanna has been honored as a Grant Wood Fellow, Rauschenberg Foundation Fellow, Yaddo Fellow, BAU Institute Fellow at the Camargo Foundation, an Anderson Ranch Fellow, Atlantic Center for the Arts Fellow, and received grants from The Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Mayer Foundation and Artists’ Fellowship, Inc.

Zoë Cohen is a multi-disciplinary visual artist. She received her BA in Fine Arts from Haverford College and her MFA from Brooklyn College. Zoë’s work has been exhibited in a variety of exhibition spaces including The National Museum of American Jewish History, The GoggleWorks, The Arlington Art Center, The Abington Art Center, Flux Factory, The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, The Painted Bride Art Center, and Arttransponder (Berlin), and is in the permanent collection of The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, The Philadelphia Cathedral, and the Museum of Art and Peace. Zoë has taught as an Adjunct Professor at Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Moore College of Art and The University of the Arts. Her Studio Residencies include The Vermont Studio Center, Philadelphia’s 40th Street AIR program, and the Artist-in-Residence program at the Philadelphia Cathedral. Zoë’s studio practice is currently complemented by her work as a labor union organizer for Higher Education faculty and staff.

Born and raised in Kentucky, Rachel Frank received her BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from The University of Pennsylvania. She is the recipient of grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and Franklin Furnace Archive. Residencies include Yaddo, Marie Walsh Sharpe, The Museum of Arts and Design, Skowhegan, the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska), Franconia Sculpture Park, Socrates Sculpture Park, and MOCA, Tucson (AZ). Her performance pieces have been shown at HERE, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Select Fair, and The Bushwick Starr in New York City, The Marran Theater at Lesley University, and at The Watermill Center in collaboration with Robert Wilson. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include MOCA Tucson (AZ), the SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Thomas Hunter Projects at Hunter College (NYC), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), and Geary Contemporary (NYC). She works in wildlife rehabilitation at the Wild Bird Fund and is based in Brooklyn, NY.  

Priscilla Fusco, known for her mixing of biology and mythology within odd sculptural objectness, Fusco combines the decorative craft of ceramics, and its various histories, with contemporary news, fashion and surrealism. She has shown at Norte Maar, Proto Gomez, Paradice Palase, Tappeto Volante, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Norte Maar’s Counterpointe series, Underdonk, and others. She lives and works in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from Hunter University and a BA in English from Barnard College.

ann/drew gayle (b. 1991) is a Brooklyn based multi-disciplinary artist currently focused on light and the liminal. They received their BFA from Hunter College of the City University of New York. ann/drew has performed and exhibited on numerous occasions, and has attended residencies that include; Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, Byrdcliffe Artists Colony, and Bklyn Clay. ann/drew gayle is the inaugural ceramic resident at Pioneer Works. 

Sue Havens (born 1972 in Rochester, New York) is an artist based in New York and Tampa. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art at the University of South Florida. Havens is a 2008 Fellow in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts and most recently, a recipient of the 2017 McKnight Junior Faculty Development Fellowship. Havens authored, designed and illustrated the book Make Your Own Toys. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union, and a MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of The Arts at Bard College. Her work was most recently featured in Warhol’s Interview Magazine. Havens has exhibited internationally and nationally in venues such as The Marjorie Barrick Museum in Las Vegas, The Museum of Drawings in Laholm, Sweden, Galerie Nord in Berlin, The Knockdown Center in New York, Regina Rex, Jeff Bailey, PS 122, Postmasters, Frederich Petzel, Art in General, Momenta Art, Sara Meltzer, OK Harris, The Houghton Gallery at The Cooper Union, Park Place Gallery, Mindy Solomon in Miami, and The Tampa Museum of Art among many others.

Work by Matt Merkel Hess has been included in shows at a variety of locations including Honey Ramka, New York; LVL3, Chicago; and Arturo Bandini and Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles. His work was included in the Venice Beach (Calif.) Boardwalk Biennial in 2012, and in a 2019 solo show at the Thomas Hunter Project Space at Hunter College, New York. Merkel Hess received an MFA at UCLA in 2010 and lives and works in New York City.

Steve Keister (b. 1949) is an artist based in New York City and he received his BFA and MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. He has received awards and grants from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship. His work is in the collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, Miami Art Museum, Hood Museum, Harvard Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, and many more.

Alison Kudlow (b. 1981) lives and works in Brooklyn. She has BA from the University of Southern California, a post-baccalaureate degree from Brandeis University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Studio Art. She has shown at numerous galleries including Field Projects, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Flux Factory, UrbanGlass, Deanna Evans Projects, Doppelgänger Projects, Paradice Palase, and at Fullerton College. She presented her first NYC solo show, Meaningful Rituals in Irrational Times, at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2019. She will be an artist in residence at the Art Ichol Center in Maihar, India in January 2023.

Dionis Ortiz is a multimedia artist, community art producer, and educator who works in printmaking, collage, and sculpture.  He was a participant in the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Program at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, received a Rema Hort Mann Artist Community Engagement Grant, and has been an Artist in Residence at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. His work was recently included in Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21 at El Museo Del Barrio (New York) and he has produced projects for Harlem River Park Fund, Museum of Art and Design, and ImageNation.  In 2021 he was Artist in Residence at Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling and his mural design was selected by PubliColor for an elementary school in East Harlem. His work has been featured in The New York Times and is included in Latinx Art: Artists, Market, and Politics by Arlene Dávila.  He received his B.F.A from SUNY Purchase College and his M.F.A from CUNY Hunter College. 

Eun-Ha Paek was born in Seoul, Korea. She received a BFA in Film/Animation/Video from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her animated films have screened in the Guggenheim Museum, Sundance Film Festival, and venues internationally. Grants and awards include the Windgate Scholarship and Rudy Autio Grant from the Archie Bray Foundation, and a Travel and Study Grant from The Jerome Foundation. Her work has received mentions in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and G4 Tech TV. Residencies include Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Sundaymorning@ekwc, Center for Contemporary Ceramics, and Archie Bray Foundation. 

Pooneh Maghazehe is a sculptor based between New York and Pennsylvania. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 2011 and a Master of Science in Interior Architecture from Pratt Institute in 2005. Solo exhibitions include “2for1” at Kathryn Brennan Gallery in New York, NY and “Double Zero -0%0%0%0%0%” at 17 Essex, New York, NY. Pooneh’s work has been exhibited internationally and reviewed in Artforum, BmoreArt, Contemporary Practices, & Magazine 1. In December 2021, she completed a commission to design the temporary storefront of the new home for the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (IAIA) in New York City. Her solo show “Half-Life” is now on view at Kino Saito in Veraplank, NY.

Underdonk

1329 Willoughby Ave, Suite 211

Brooklyn, NY 11237

Modular Mosaic

May 14th – June 19th, 2022

Opening reception Saturday, May 14th, 6-8 pm

Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 1-6 pm